It is a disease most often associated with the ancient world.
But, contrary to assumptions that leprosy is extinct in the West, recent data from the Department of Health reveals there were 185 recorded cases in Australia in the past decade.
There were 13 cases last year, according to the National Notifiable Diseases Surveillance System – three in New South Wales, one in the Northern Territory, two in Queensland, five in Victoria and two in Western Australia.
NSW Health’s director of communicable diseases, Dr Vicky Sheppeard, said none of the cases were locally acquired.
“It’s either been immigrants or Australians who’ve spent lengthy time in those parts of the world where there still is leprosy quite common,” she said.
On World Leprosy Day this Sunday, health advocates and Australian survivors of the disease are fighting to dispel the myths surrounding it.
The disease attacks the nerves, causing numbness in the hands, feet and face.
An inability to feel pain in the extremities often leads to sufferers injuring themselves, damaging tissue and ultimately leading to deformity.
Joe Eggmolesse from Maryborough in Queensland contracted leprosy in 1945.
At barely seven years old, he was sent away from his parents to the Fantome Island leprosarium, north of Townsville, on the so-called “death train”.
