An important perspective on the recent history of leprosy - and its implications for the current Global Strategy

The Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation (SMHF) has just published a fascinating book: “A Life Fighting Leprosy: a collection of the speeches and writings of Dr Yo Yuasa”, which will be of interest to many readers of Leprosy Review, and beyond. Few, if any, individuals have played so many important roles in the field of leprosy over the past several decades as has Dr Yuasa: from clinical medical officer in leprosy hospitals in Hong Kong and Nepal, to Secretary and then President of the International Leprosy Association, to Medical and then Executive Director of the Sasakawa Foundation, which has been one of the largest and most influential supporters of leprosy work around the world over the past 40 years. The book consists of 22 speeches and essays by Dr Yuasa, delivered or written over 30 years, 1982 – 2012. Few of them have been published before, and all are elegantly written. They cover the important period from the initiation of MDT as recommended by the WHO Study Group in 1981, to the elimination declaration by the World Health Assembly (WHA) in 1991, to the struggles to maintain the ILA and the International Leprosy Journal in the early 2000s, and include reflections on the successive strategies developed and promoted through ILEP, the ILA and WHO through 2012. They reveal their author to be both a pragmatist and a philosopher. The book contains many references to major figures in the leprosy world of recent decades, providing glimpses of personal interactions and events behind the scenes at important points in the history of leprosy policy. There are fascinating historical anecdotes – such as how what became known as the first International Leprosy Congress in Berlin was organised in 1897 because of concerns over 34 leprosy cases among Russian immigrants to Prussia. And we learn of a bargain between Riochi Sasakawa, founder of the SMHF, and Halfdan Mahler, Director General of WHO, in 1974/5, when WHO accepted $500,000 for leprosy work only on the condition that an equivalent amount from the SMHF went to rescue a funding shortfall of the Smallpox Eradication Programme.