一、麻风作为卫生问题的优先性:最近25年人们反复讲全世界的麻风病人约有1500万。有些人认为这个数字偏低,因为常常看到一个国家所有的病人数要比根据统计数字作出的估计更多,其理由有:①只对少数居民作过调查;②许多病人可能被漏诊了,特别是在麻风并不很多的国家;③在许多国家报病制度不好或者根本没有,特别是在麻风可能呈高度地方性流行的国家;④为查出病人而设的医疗机构太少;⑤世界上有些地区存在着一种忽视麻风病人、不重视诊断的倾向,因为害怕麻风或者过份依赖专业化的防治机构。目前一些国家的发病率在减低,而在另一些国家则似乎静止不动。尽管有良好的防治计划,大量病人正在治疗,可是居民的数量也在增加,这意味着有更多的人有发病的危险。在某些国家患病者占居民的 First, the priority of leprosy as a health issue: In the past 25 years, people have repeatedly talked about 15 million leprosy patients worldwide. Some people think that this figure is low, because it is often seen that the number of patients in a country is higher than the estimate based on statistics. The reasons are: 1 Only a small number of residents have been investigated; 2 Many patients may be missed, Especially in countries where there is not much leprosy; 3 In many countries, the reporting system is not good or not at all, especially in countries where leprosy may be highly endemic; 4 There are too few medical institutions to detect patients; 5 In some parts of the world, there is a tendency to ignore leprosy patients and pay no attention to diagnosis because of fear of leprosy or excessive reliance on specialized prevention and control institutions. At present, the incidence in some countries is decreasing, while in others it seems to be still. Despite the fact that there are good prevention programs and a large number of patients are being treated, the number of residents is also increasing, which means that more people have the risk of developing morbidity. In some countries, sick people account for residents