HC Deb 31 March 1977 vol 929 c253W
Mr. Patrick Jenkin

asked the Secretary of State for Education and Science what research her Department is sponsoring into Hansen's disease; and whether she is aware that drugs which have treated the disease successfully for decades are now becoming ineffective due to the development of resistant bacilli.

Mrs. Shirley Williams

Research into Hansen's disease is supported by the Medical Research Council, chiefly through the Laboratory for Leprosy and Mycobacterial Research at the National Institute for Medical Research which covers many aspects of the subject. The council also supports clinical research in Malaysia and Ethiopia. Continuing field studies in both countries of the most widely used drug, dapsone, have revealed both the difficulties associated with the very prolonged treatment required and the emergence of resistant strains of bacilli. The council's workers in Ethiopia are at present engaged in a major research study attempting to prevent dapsone resistance in the 1,200 patients with the lepromatous form of the disease already under treatment in Addis Ababa.

At the laboratory itself, encouraging preliminary results have been achieved in the supply and purification of the infective organism responsible. This work is partly in collaboration with a World Health Organisation programme on the "Immunology of Leprosy" and shows promise of achieving the Organisation's primary objectives of producing a specific skin test to identfy those infected by the disease and eventually studying the development of a specific vaccine.