Govt mulls closing leprosy hospital in city as disease almost eradicated

Samaan Lateef

Tribune News Service

Srinagar, June 11

The Jammu and Kashmir Government is mulling to close the leprosy hospital in Srinagar after the near elimination of the disease from Kashmir.

Officials say J&K has undergone epidemiological transition after 1996 and has successfully removed leprosy.

The proposal to close the hospital has been moved even as a fresh case of leprosy from the Rainawari locality of Srinagar was detected and sent to New Delhi for further examination.

“Diseases such as leprosy have been eliminated. The leprosy hospital in Srinagar is irrelevant in the changed health scenario of the state with new effective treatment protocols available,” reads a proposal pending before the state government.

The leprosy hospital, which presently houses 78 patients, was established by British missionaries in the 1890s to treat leprosy patients and isolate the disease, which had at that time gripped Kashmir.

In the absence of treatment, the authorities would isolate the patients from their families and house them at the hospital – an erstwhile Mughal fort.

At present, the Directorate of Health Services, Kashmir, has employed two doctors and an equal number of medical assistants at the hospital.

Chief Medical Officer, Srinagar, Dr Talat Jabeen said the Health Department had been conducting a survey between January 31 and February 14 annually to screen patients for leprosy. “After several years, we detected a person in February with leprosy from the Rainawari locality,” Jabeen said.

Doctors say the inmates of leprosy hospital are no longer contagious and under some precautions, people can live with them safely.

The medical officer, Dr Sajad, who was posted at the leprosy hospital last year, said the infectious disease could spread only through nasal droplets during sneezing.

Of the 78 patients, at least 35 are above 70 years of age and are completely dependent on government services. “These inmates are dependent on the government for each and everything. The government has to look for some alternative for the inmates who are mostly crippled due to amputations or other wounds,” he said.