Leprosy cases are rare but still appear in Portugal — DNOTICIAS.PT
They are rare, but every year, cases of patients with the disease come from countries where the disease is endemic such as Brazil, Bangladesh, India or Nepal come to the consultation for Hans Capuchos disease in Lisbon.
Although they no longer exist in Portugal, some cases of immigrants will appear in this consultation at the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Central (CHULC), the only one in Lisbon and the south of the country.
“Its long-standing 20th century have been many faithful, therefore, greatly is a number of patients, therefore, the number of patients who have many patients, declaring to the Lusa agency about Hansen Diase, the dermatologist for Combating residual Hansen”. (leprosy), which is marked this year on January 30th.
According to the person in charge of the consultation, there is another “one, two, three, four cases, at most, per year” of people born abroad, and there are no new cases of patients for more than five years.
“In general terms, we should follow between 30 and 40 patients a year, most of them already and only under surveillance”, he said.
The new patients from African countries in this consultation are mainly from Brazil, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, but also some patients from Portuguese-speaking African countries.
begin to have in Portugal, some manifestations of the disease. Others already arrive with the completion for the treatment in the country made to live.
“More diseases are diseases that occur as complications of, such as disease and illness, problems of disease occurrence,” he said.
Most patients can treat most patients without suffering very marked sequelae, “while maintaining functionality, their employment and the ability to use their hands and feet without major sequelae”.
Most of the companions at the consultation are between 30 and 40 years old, but there were cases in which the disease appeared in adolescence. “That was very traumatic and conditioned the development of these kids a lot and left important sequelae”, he lamented.
There are patients who have been followed up in the hospital for more than 20 years, but, more deeply, explained: “It’s more likely with the stigma of their illness and with the reception that they don’t come back and then, to make sure that what happened doesn’t is a relapse of Hansen’s disease”.
“These are very dramatic situations, especially in people who have had a disease and who still remember,” he said, adding that patients never say they have it as they are remembered.
“Stigma is very marked and we even teach some strategies to protect themselves a little because it is a disease that still has a reminiscence of a stigma that has not passed and as little is said it still gets a little worse”, he said.
The consultation of Han Cabral’s years of care, in Lisbon, which was not created in the consultation service of the years of dermatology after the existence of the existence of the consultation of the years of Dermatology of Han, which operated in the Rovisco Pais Hospital. da Tocha, in the district of Coimbra, where the sick were compulsively hospitalized.
“It is a consultation that has existed for many years for the diagnosis and treatment of patients with Hansencobacterium disease” disorder caused by the bacterium ‘My leprae’ that affects the skin and peripheral system.
The incubation time of the disease is very long: “The patient between being infected and having the manifestations [manchas na pele] It can take many years.”
How the disease affects the nerves, what sensitivity to pain, what happens that patients do not suffer pain, wounds and this causes trauma, healing.
With the onset of the disease, if left untreated, leg problems can arise and even lose finger endings.
Cândidas Sal Fernandes points out that there is treatment for the disease (three different antibiotics), that the Organization of the sick for health (WHO) is necessary for all the sick for health (WHO) for all the sick so that “leprosy becomes increasingly rare and less and less of a “problem”.
For the doctor, leprosy should be looked at with “all the richness of its history, but also with the hope that it is a disease to be treated”.
“Patients with adequate follow-up of people can live their lives without worry and without sequelae, and the transmission of the disease in the small population and the closest people is also treated a lot, and that is an important thing”, he concluded.
Every year there are about 200,000 new cases of leprosy worldwide, according to United Nations data.