Curing leprosy amid misconceptions, stereotypes, and societal expectations

Abstract

Leprosy is a mildly contagious disease that can be cured through a combination of antibiotic treatments. However, the clinical reality of leprosy is overshadowed by its social reality, thus worsening the lived experience of those affected. To conceptualize the severity of leprosy’s social reality, this article aims to situate the disease outside of clinical boundaries by investigating the myths, attitudes, and sociocultural presumptions underlying the disease. This type of comprehensive social analysis is critical for developing regional plans to encourage clinical leprosy treatments. Therefore, studies on leprosy conducted in Bangladesh, India, Vietnam, and Nepal were taken into consideration. The review of literature that uncovered the sociocultural attitudes associated with leprosy yielded several significant insights. First, leprosy had associations with bodily pollution due to its severe physical deformities, which endangered society's ideal of purity. Second, due to the degrading connotations associated with leprosy, affected patients were abandoned without adequate economic support, forcing them to take extreme measures to survive. Finally, a leprosy diagnosis creates an insurmountable gap between their past as a healthy person and their present with leprosy, resulting in reintegration difficulties and a loss of belonging. Such negative social attitudes towards leprosy contribute to patients' reluctance to access clinical treatments in fear of social ostracism and humiliation, exacerbating an otherwise curable condition.