It takes more than the roll-out of drugs to end Neglected Tropical Diseases (NTDs) like leprosy. It takes courage — courage to confront destructive myths and lies that shatter lives. It takes time and resources to reach some of the most marginalised communities on earth. It takes relentless compassion to welcome back those who were once cast out.
But before any of that, it takes a willingness to look directly at the suffering the Western world is trying not to see.
Because right now, the neglect surrounding leprosy is condemning Generation Alpha — the very generation our own children belong to — to avoidable disability, isolation and unimaginable cruelty.
We are currently working with two children whose stories should shake every one of us. A little boy in Nepal who was told he was cursed by a snake god, and a toddler in Nigeria whose ear was sliced off to atone for his mother allegedly being a witch.
What was their crime, you may ask? They had leprosy — a mildly infectious disease easily cured with a combination of antibiotics. A disease that becomes a lifelong sentence only when it is left untreated because the world chooses to look away.
If these children lived in the UK, there would be a public outcry. Headlines across national papers. Questions in Parliament and protesters lining the streets demanding action.
But because their suffering happens in remote communities across Asia and Africa — children whose names we don’t know and whose pain we don’t see — it somehow becomes easy to ignore.
We in the West celebrate how ‘small’ the world has become. We fly long-haul for summer holidays. We work across continents as if borders and time zones barely exist. Distance, we say, is no longer an obstacle. We can be citizens of the world!
And yet when it comes to truths that make us uncomfortable — like a Biblical, stigmatised disease destroying children’s lives — distance becomes a convenient excuse. An easy opportunity to look away. Well, at least it’s not on my doorstep so I can avoid thinking about it.
Governments do the same. After Elon Musk boasted of feeding US Aid “to the woodchipper”, other wealthy nations, including the UK, followed suit by cutting their overseas aid. As a direct result, Generation Alpha has become more vulnerable to leprosy than at any point in recent history. That should shame us.
Leprosy is not malaria — a disease many of us can relate to because we have taken tablets before flying somewhere quite lovely. Nor is it polio, which, despite immense challenges, received sustained global backing.
Leprosy once had that support. When the first effective cure was discovered in the late twentieth century, the world surged forward with determination. But momentum faded too quickly. And for the past decade, new cases have stagnated at around 200,000 each year, according to the World Health Organization. Yet research supports what we already know only too well. For every diagnosed case, 19 remain hidden.
Hidden children and hidden suffering. Hidden because governments don’t prioritise it and overstretched health systems simply can’t keep up.
With more conflicts now than at any time since World War II, and climate change hitting the poorest communities the hardest, we are spiralling backwards. The UN’s goal of ending the epidemic of NTDs by 2030 is not only painfully out of reach but not even in sight.
We know this not only from reports but from what our teams are finding every day. We are uncovering pockets where the number of children with leprosy is shockingly high. And because the bacterium grows so slowly, visible symptoms in a young child mean the disease is circulating fiercely through their community.
The physical impact on young bodies is brutal — nerve damage, disability and searing pain. But the emotional impact is even more devastating. Children branded as cursed are driven out of school, cut off from friendships and grow up believing they are unworthy of love. Families are cast out from their communities, or their children are imprisoned within four walls for fear of the outside world discovering their ‘terrible’ secret.
If this were happening on our doorstep, we would consider it a monstrous injustice. Because it is. We would never tolerate such cruelty for British children. So why do we tolerate it for children in Nepal, Nigeria, India, Mozambique or Bangladesh?
Wherever a child is suffering, we all have a global responsibility. Our compassion should transcend postcodes, passports and borders. So it is time to wake up and finish what we started with the rollout of Multidrug therapy, the cure for leprosy, in the 80s and 90s. And this time not with the soul-crushing belief that if we don’t look, we won’t find and it will somehow not exist. But with our whole hearts, knowing that we can be part of a global force that spares Generation Alpha from leprosy — and every generation that follows.
Peter Waddup is Chief Executive of The Leprosy Mission.
