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Endocrinologists are doctors who specialize in glands and the hormones they make. They deal with metabolism, or all the biochemical processes that make your body work, including how your body changes food into energy and how it grows.

They may work with adults or kids. When they specialize in treating children, they're called pediatric endocrinologists.

Endocrinologists are licensed internal medicine doctors who have passed an additional certification exam.

They go to college for 4 years, then medical school for 4 more years. Afterward, they work in hospitals and clinics as residents for 3 years to get experience treating people. They'll spend another 2 or 3 years training specifically in endocrinology.

The whole process usually takes at least 10 years.

Credit : WebMD

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Scientists are still not 100 percent sure how leprosy is transmitted and there is a lot research being conducted to find out exactly how it happens. In The Leprosy Mission, our teams in Bangladesh, India and Nepal are all working on transmission studies.

Most scientists believe that leprosy is caught through droplets of moisture passing through the air from an infectious person who has leprosy, but has not been treated with multi-drug therapy (MDT). Only 1 in 10 of people affected by leprosy are infectious.

Leprosy is a mildly infectious disease. This means that it is rare to catch the disease after a brief encounter with an infectious person. People are most at risk of catching leprosy if they spend prolonged periods of time with an infectious person within a confined space. For example, if they spend a long time in a small room with that person.

However, even if you live with a person who is affected by leprosy and is infectious (has not received treatment) your risk of contracting the disease is low. Recent research by our team in Bangladesh showed that, over the course of a year, no more than 13 out of every 1,000 people who lived with a person affected by leprosy was diagnosed with the disease themselves. 

For anyone who is worried about infection because they live in a community with recent cases of leprosy (primarily in Asia, Africa, and Latin America), all they need to do is keep an eye out for the signs and symptoms of the disease, and then get treatment, which is free and effective.

Credit : Leprosy Mission 

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Leprosy is a chronic infectious disease caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae. M leprae multiplies slowly and the incubation period of the disease, on average, is 5 years. Symptoms may occur within 1 year but can also take as long as 20 years or even more.

Leprosy is an age-old disease, described in the literature of ancient civilizations. Throughout history, people afflicted have often been ostracized by their communities and families.

Although leprosy was managed differently in the past, the first breakthrough occurred in the 1940s with the development of the medicine dapsone. The duration of treatment lasted many years, often a lifetime, making compliance difficult. In the 1960s, M. leprae started to develop resistance to dapsone, the only known anti-leprosy medicine at that time. In the early 1960s, rifampicin and clofazimine were discovered and subsequently added to the treatment regimen, which was later labelled as multidrug therapy (MDT).

In 1981, WHO recommended MDT. The currently recommended MDT regimen consists of medicines: dapsone, rifampicin and clofazimine. This treatment lasts six months for pauci-bacillary and 12 months for multi-bacillary cases. MDT kills the pathogen and cures the patient.

Since 1981 WHO has provided MDT free of cost. Free MDT was initially funded by The Nippon Foundation, and since 2000 it is donated through an agreement with Novartis until 2025.

More than 16 million leprosy patients have been treated with MDT over the past 20 years. A general reduction in new cases, though gradual is observed in several countries. The new cases reduced to 202 256 in 2019.  Several countries reported less number cases, including 45 countries reported zero leprosy cases.

Credit : World Health Organization 

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Leprosy is an infectious disease that causes severe, disfiguring skin sores and nerve damage in the arms, legs, and skin areas around your body. Leprosy has been around since ancient times. Outbreaks have affected people on every continent.

But leprosy, also known as Hanson’s disease, isn’t that contagious. You can catch it only if you come into close and repeated contact with nose and mouth droplets from someone with untreated leprosy. Children are more likely to get leprosy than adults.

Today, about 208,000 people worldwide are infected with leprosy, according to the World Health Organization, most of them in Africa and Asia. About 100 people are diagnosed with leprosy in the U.S. every year, mostly in the South, California, Hawaii, and some U.S. territories.

Leprosy is caused by a slow-growing type of bacteria called Mycobacterium leprae (M. leprae). Leprosy is also known as Hansen's disease, after the scientist who discovered M. leprae in 1873.

It isn’t clear exactly how leprosy is transmitted. When a person with leprosy coughs or sneezes, they may spread droplets containing the M. leprae bacteria that another person breathes in. Close physical contact with an infected person is necessary to transmit leprosy. It isn’t spread by casual contact with an infected person, like shaking hands, hugging, or sitting next to them on a bus or at a table during a meal.

Credit : WebMD 

Picture Credit : Google