World Leprosy Day.

PARVEZ BABUL Research shows that leprosy is one of the oldest diseases known to humankind. It is also known as Hansen's disease, named after Norwegian physician Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen. He debunked the prevailing notion of the time that leprosy was a hereditary disease. He showed that the disease had a bacterial cause instead. For thousands of years, people with leprosy have been stigmatized and considered to be at the extreme margins of the society. Sunday, January 25, 2015 (last Sunday of each year) World Leprosy Day is being observed globally. The date for World Leprosy Day was chosen to closely coincide with the anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi's assassination on January 30, 1948. During his lifetime, Gandhi worked tirelessly towards the betterment of people afflicted with leprosy. The aim of World Leprosy Day is to change negative attitude and increase public awareness of the fact that leprosy can now be easily prevented and cured. Leprosy Mission International-Bangladesh (TLMI-B) has noted that access to information, diagnosis and treatment with multidrug therapy (MDT) remain key elements in the strategy to eliminate the disease as a public health problem. It defined as reaching a prevalence of less than one leprosy case per 10,000