Who gets Leprosy???

Answer 1

Leprosy (Hansen's disease)
Last Reviewed: November 2006

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What is leprosy?
Leprosy is a chronic bacterial disease of the skin and nerves in the hands and feet and, in some cases, the lining of the nose. Leprosy is a rare disease in the United States.

Who gets leprosy?
Anyone can get leprosy, but children seem to be more susceptible than adults.

How is leprosy spread?
It is not clear how the leprosy germ is spread, but household and prolonged close contact is important. The germs probably enter the body through the nose and possibly through broken skin. The germs get in the air through nasal discharge of untreated lepromatous patients.

What are the symptoms of leprosy?
Tuberculoid leprosy symptoms are a few well-defined skin lesions that are numb. Lepromatous leprosy symptoms are a chronically stuffy nose and many skin lesions and nodules on both sides of the body.

How soon after exposure do symptoms appear?
It usually takes about four years for tuberculoid leprosy symptoms to appear and about eight years for lepromatous leprosy symptoms to appear.

When and for how long is a person able to spread leprosy?
In most cases, a person will not infect others after about three months of starting treatment.

What is the treatment for leprosy?
Patients with leprosy should be treated by a doctor who has experience with the disease. Treatment is with multiple drugs for six months to two years.

How can leprosy be prevented?
The best way to prevent the spread of leprosy is the early diagnosis and treatment of people who are infected. For household contacts, immediate and annual examinations are recommended for at least five years after last contact with a person who is infectious.

Answer 2

Leprosy, more commonly called Hansen's disease is rare in most of the developed world. Although anyone could potentially develop the disease, the risk of contracting it in the US is basically zero, as it is so uncommon. The biblical image of the leper spreading a highly contagious disease just isn't true, and it takes repeated and extended contact to transmit the disease.

There are only a few countries that still see any significant disease. The World Health Organization map at http://www.who.int/lep/situation/PrateEnd2005v2-WM2.pdf shows the countries with any significant disease. As you will see from the link, it is not found in most of the world anymore.The cases we see in the United States are typically in people who have migrated to the US from a country that still had the disease when they were born.