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0:00
Hello. It's a great pleasure
to be talking about leprosy.
I'm Diana Lockwood,
and I'm a Professor
of Tropical Medicine.
I've spent a lifetime
working on leprosy.
I want to share the interest
and challenges of leprosy
with you in this talk.
0:18
In this talk, I'm going to talk
about the clinical
signs of leprosy.
That's very important
because leprosy is
diagnosed clinically
on the basis of the skin
lesions and the nerve lesions.
I'm going to talk about the
presentation of leprosy,
the different range
of skin lesions
that people can present with
and I'm going to talk about
the examination of the skin
and the nerve that's important
to diagnose leprosy.
We're fortunate
because leprosy is a
very treatable mycobacterial
infection and we have
antibiotics that work very
well and give a good outcome
in terms of treatment with
a very high cure rate.
However, leprosy
is complicated by
these immunological
events called reactions,
and these are when patients have
episodes of increased
inflammation
and they present as
new inflammation in
the skin lesions and
inflammation in the nerve,
which is called neuritis.
Then finally, there's the
prevention of disability
and this is very
important in leprosy
because leprosy is a
disabling disease.
1:26
People often ask why did I
get interested in leprosy?
The answer is because I had
a gap year between
school and university,
and I volunteered in a leprosy
hospital in India in 1975.
When I was at the hospital,
the man running
the hospital said
leprosy is a really
interesting disease and
I could see it was
because they were
just getting new antibiotics
to treat leprosy.
But I could also see
that you could prevent
a lot of the nerve
damage by helping people
look after their hands and feet,
and so getting people
to do self-care.
After that, I then
travelled home over land.
The map shows my
journey across Pakistan
and then around Afghanistan
and then across Iran
and then up to Turkey.
I did this as a
single 18-year-old
and I had a fascinating time.
Of course, Afghanistan
has completely changed
since I was there in
1975, as has Iran.
That gave me a lot of interest
in leprosy and interest in
travel and I'm very
glad that I've been
able to combine the two.
I came back to Birmingham
and then I trained
in medicine there.
Obviously, I was interested
in infectious diseases
and I then did student
projects on leprosy
because I knew that I wanted
to do research on leprosy.
I then moved to London and
I trained in general
medicine and
specialised in
infectious diseases
and then super-specialised
in leprosy.
I did research on leprosy and
that took me back to India.
Then I was very lucky
because in 1994
the one NHS leprologist retired
and so I was able
to take his post
and be the UK leprologist.
I then combined a career
in medicine and research
because I did my academic work
at the School of Hygiene
and Tropical Medicine.
What I've done is a lot
of work on trying to
improve outcomes for
leprosy patients.
