Socio-economic research in the Philippines with special references to leprosy.

This brief paper presents the need for studies on the social aspects of leprosy; it also describes a current research project in the Philippines with a multidisciplinary team consisting of medical doctors and social scientists. Moreover, it tries to show what the research data might do to improve leprosy control programmes. The research team hopes that these pioneering efforts in the study of the social aspects of leprosy, which is a highly stigmatized disease, will encourage other scientists to follow suit.