Present-day organization of the leprosy control programme in France

In France, the leprosy control programme is the responsibility of the Services of Dermatology and Neurology. Patients are registered with the General Organization of Social Security, and in the case of chronic disease the entire costs of medical treatment, drugs and inpatients care are defrayed by the government. Indigenous leprosy no longer occurs. Very few native-born French citizens have caught the disease abroad, and the great majority of the approximately 3.000 cases at present receiving medical care in France are immigrant workers from subsahelan Africa, the Caribbean, South-east Asia and the Iberian peninsula, especially Portugal. Patients are admitted to the hospital only for a very short period of observation and determination of treatment regimens, or in the event of complications like reactional episodes or before, during and after some operative interference. The general tendency is to avoid admission to hospital and to return the patients as quickly as possible to active professional and family life. In the present hygienic standards of Western Europe, prophylactic measures and compulsory controls in workplaces and the home have practically disappeared, and if official rules still impose nominal requirements of various kinds of disinfection, in fact the strict observance of these rules is no longer seen. The only two requirements usually asked of an infectious patient are: That he should sleep by himself in a separate bedroom; That all the children in the household should be vaccinated with BCG at birth and should remain away from their infectious mother for six weeks. The treatment regiment regimens ordinarily followed, are based in multidrug therapy. Monotherapy is no longer used