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Timor fightback

8:05am Monday, 5th July 2010  

Susan Masima of TLM

While combating tuberculosis, HIV/AIDS and malaria, the Timor Leste Government is striving to eradicate leprosy by the end of this year as a major public health problem. It is looking to one Australian Christian woman to help achieve the goal.
In Timor Leste leprosy still causes permanent disability and disfigurement to hundreds of people.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) regards leprosy as a major health problem when numbers of cases are recorded above 1 in 10,000 people. Until the end of 2009, only Nepal and Timor Leste had not reached the WHO eradication rate of less than 1 case per 10,000 population in South-East Asia.
However, Nepal reached this rate in December last year. Despite Timor Leste’s small population, the prevalence of leprosy is still 1.4 in 10,000.
Field worker for The Leprosy Mission (TLM) Australia, Natalie Smith, is working in Timor Leste to assist national government health workers to diagnose and treat new cases of leprosy and rehabilitate people with disabilities. Since moving to Timor Leste last September, Ms Smith has seen many people with severe disabilities.
Some have damage to their limbs because of the unavailability of medical services during the internal conflict in the country from 1975–1999.
“The leprosy program halted during the civil unrest”, she said.
“All statistics were burnt and any information we now have about leprosy in the country is since 2002. Anyone who was sick often could not access services. So people who had leprosy became more disabled and the disease spread because people couldn’t access treatment.”
The majority of cases of leprosy in Timor Leste have been detected in the remote enclave of Oecussi which is cut off from the rest of Timor Leste and surrounded by West Timor (Indonesia). In Oecussi, the prevalence of leprosy was 10.6 per 10,000 in 2008.
“Leprosy is high in Oecussi because it is isolated and away from Timor Leste, and it was hard for health workers to get there’’, she said.
“The whole aim is train up Timorese local health workers in project management so that one of them can be the leader of TLM’s leprosy program in the future. Hopefully this will happen within two years’’, Natalie said.
The Staff at TLM are working with about 600 clients in three districts of East Timor. A Disabled People’s Organisation has been formed in Dili and has raised awareness of the needs of the disabled during the elections. 
www.leprosymission.org.au