{"id":233855,"date":"2023-04-24T12:00:56","date_gmt":"2023-04-24T11:00:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=233855"},"modified":"2023-04-20T06:30:35","modified_gmt":"2023-04-20T05:30:35","slug":"spreading-faster-than-ever-bangladeshs-tea-pickers-have-worlds-highest-rate-of-leprosy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2023\/04\/spreading-faster-than-ever-bangladeshs-tea-pickers-have-worlds-highest-rate-of-leprosy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Spreading Faster than Ever\u2019: Bangladesh\u2019s Tea Pickers Have World\u2019s Highest Rate of Leprosy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Despite the WHO declaring it eliminated in 1998, thousands of tea pickers have caught the disease.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Aloka Gonju, a tea picker in Sylhet, was diagnosed with leprosy a year ago. Now she can only pick leaves with her right hand, which limits how much she can earn. Photograph: Ruth Towell<\/p><\/div>\n

7 Apr 2023 – <\/em>A<\/span><\/span>loka Gonju didn\u2019t take much notice of the discoloured patch of skin on her left hand until her fingers began to stiffen and hurt. It became a struggle to pick leaves at the tea plantation where she works in Bangladesh<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI had no idea what was happening to me,\u201d says the 47-year-old, whose wages support her husband, four children and three grandchildren.<\/p>\n

By the time she sought help, the nerve damage in her left hand was too extensive to regain its use. Gonju was diagnosed with leprosy two years ago.<\/p>\n

According to the Leprosy Mission, the vast tea plantations <\/a>of Sylhet in the north-east of the country, which employ about 600,000 workers<\/a> \u2013 mostly women from minority groups \u2013 have the highest rate of leprosy in the world.<\/p>\n

The charity, which works in 10 countries in Africa and Asia, found a prevalence rate of up to 15 cases for every 10,000 people, compared with fewer than one in 10,000 in the rest of the country. Most families have someone infected with the disease.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the tea estates of Sylhet, leprosy has been spreading much faster than our team has ever seen,\u201d says Dr Benjamin Rozario, the resident medical officer for the mission in Bangladesh.<\/p>\n

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The tea gardens have an extremely high number of new leprosy cases \u2013 the area is thought to have the highest density of people affected by leprosy in the world.<\/span> Photograph: Ruth Towell<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The UN\u2019s special rapporteur on ending discrimination against people with leprosy, Alice Cruz, warned last month that the country could have a high number of hidden cases of the disease.<\/p>\n

Leprosy is one of the world\u2019s most neglected diseases<\/a>. It is spread by moisture droplets passed through the air. Tea pickers, who usually live in crowded conditions in basic corrugated-iron homes on the plantations, and lack decent food, sanitation and health facilities, are particularly vulnerable to infection.<\/p>\n

Drugs can stop the disease progressing, but they cannot reverse disability.<\/p>\n

Gonju, who works on a plantation in Srimangal, still picks tea but now relies solely on her right hand. She is paid according to how much she can pick, so her reduced capacity means her and her family struggle by the end of each month.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt breaks my heart but I\u2019m lucky I started treatment when I did,\u201d she says, while taking an afternoon break in the shade. \u201cIf I had lost both hands to leprosy, I would have lost my job and my home.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Adamarvili,<\/picture><\/div>
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Adamarvili, left, and Dalamar, right, pick tea in a plantation in the Sylhet region.<\/span> Photograph: Ruth Towell<\/strong><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

She now helps to run a support group for people with leprosy living on her plantation.<\/p>\n

The Leprosy Mission team has cured more than 1,600 cases since it started working in the plantations in 2017. It has set up pop-up clinics on the plantations and assigned community health workers and doctors to search for the signs of leprosy and provide the support and care patients need long term, before they lose the use of limbs, and potentially their livelihoods.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor many here, the journey to the hospital is too expensive and too far away to walk,\u201d says Rozario. \u201cThat\u2019s why we bring the hospital to them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The World Health<\/a> Organization declared leprosy eliminated in Bangladesh in 1998, but that meant it had fewer than one case for 10,000 people, not that there were no more infections. According to the WHO, the country still has the fifth-highest number of leprosy cases in the world.<\/p>\n