Bangladesh Prime Minister Hasina Responds Positively as I Invite Her to Attend 2nd National Leprosy Conference in Dhaka

In early September I visited Bangladesh to invite Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina to attend the second National Leprosy Conference that the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative is co-organizing in the capital Dhaka later this year with Bangladesh’s Ministry of Health and Family Welfare and Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

I was fully aware how busy the prime minister was going to be between the time we met and the yearend. Just a few days after our meeting, she attended the G20 summit in New Delhi on September 9 and flew on to New York to address the United Nations General Assembly on September 19. She is now gearing up for campaigning for general elections scheduled to be held in January 2024.

But knowing what it would mean for persons affected by leprosy in Bangladesh and others around the world if the prime minister put in an appearance, I felt her presence at the conference would be of the utmost importance. Happy to report, Prime Minister Hasina said she would be willing to attend.

At the first leprosy conference in 2019, joined by hundreds of health workers, medical professionals and persons affected by leprosy, the prime minister announced the Zero Leprosy Initiative aimed at eliminating leprosy in the country by 2030. We are now working closely with Bangladesh officials of the health and foreign affairs ministries to see that the second conference brings fresh momentum to this initiative.

Bangladesh remains one of 23 WHO priority countries for leprosy, which together account for 95% of new leprosy cases each year. In 2022,　Bangladesh reported 2,988 cases, the fifth highest in the world.

In Brazil, another country on the WHO’s priority list and second only to India in the number of new cases it reports each year, we have also been discussing with the authorities to hold a national Hansen’s disease summit there. I appreciate the tireless efforts of Dr. Takahiro Nanri, executive director of the Sasakawa Health Foundation, in helping to pave the way for this.

In fact, the summit was initially slated for March 2020 with the participation of then-president Jair Bolsonaro, but it was called off due to the coronavirus pandemic. Now it is set for the end of November, with President Inácio Lula da Silva attending.

As my overseas missions pick up again following the COVID-19 pandemic, I am also making plans to visit several countries in Africa in support of their national leprosy programs.

In addition, preparations for next year’s Global Appeal to End Stigma and Discrimination against Persons Affected by Leprosy are now under way. This will be the 19th appeal in the series that I launched in 2006, and I have invited WHO Director-General Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and other senior WHO officials to endorse its important message. I am most grateful to them for their support.