The following is an article written by Special Ambassador Yohei
Sasakawa that appeared in the Yomiuri Shimbun on August 27, 2003.

This past July, I visited the United Nations Office of the High
Commissioner for Human Rights in Geneva and met with Acting High
Commissioner Bernard Ramcharan, to petition him to give careful
thought to the question of leprosy and human rights.

Today, there are more than 650,000 patients and 20,000,000 former
patients around the world. If the families of these people are
included (as they must be) there are more than 100 million people
in the world suffering from the unjust discrimination related to
the disease. This discrimination applies to education,
marriage and work, but the extremity of this particular kind of
stigma even continues beyond the grave: family members' suffering
does not end.

Acting High Commissioner Ramcharan told me frankly that in his 30
years dealing with human rights, this was the first time he had
heard of the problem and agreed on the spot that it was indeed
major.

I have been working in the field of leprosy elimination for more
than 30 years and today am working on the frontlines of the
elimination battle, as WHO's Special Ambassador for the Elimination
of Leprosy. Leprosy was long thought to be incurable but patients
today can be completely healed within a year thanks to multi-drug
therapy, or MDT. Today, only India and five other countries have
yet to achieve WHO's elimination target of less than 1 person in
10,000.

As you can see, leprosy is on the threshold of being eliminated in
a medical sense. Since 1985, 11,000,000 people have been freed from
the disease. However, even though the medical problem has been
solved, the social situation of those affected by the disease
remains the same. Until the unfounded discrimination against them
has been eliminated, our fight will not end.