Background reading

 

If you go way, way back in this blog to my entry of August 30, 2010, you’ll see a post about my first trip to Carville, Louisiana. Carville is the site of the only Hansen’s Disease treatment center in the continental United States. It resides in the “leprosy belt” that runs from Florida to Texas, including the states in between. Traditionally, these states have been the sites of the majority of leprosy cases in the contiguous states, but other states also had residents who had the infection. The states within the leprosy belt also happen to be the territory of the nine-banded armadillo, a main source of transmission to humans.

 

And now for some background reading:

Here's a systematic review in a Brazilian tropical medicine journal that is openly available and discusses armadillos as a vector and M. Leprae infection in these animals:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6746198/

 

Here is an article from the Minnesota Post about the prevalence of leprosy in that state in the 19^th century within the Norwegian immigrant population. The article also mentions Dr. Gerhard Armauer Hansen, the Norwegian physician who first identified that the disease might be bacterial in origin. Hansen is the eponym for Hansen’s Disease, the less stigmatizing way to refer to the condition.

https://www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/2018/11/how-minnesotans-handle-leprosy-around-the-turn-of-the-20th-century/?gad=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwoeemBhCfARIsADR2QCtJvoexuRW8LN1hB8dlNbFej0MqHpjS2u7ozF6Ot3O1nxRiZGZF-1saApJdEALw_wcB

 

Here’s a link to the CDC site that addresses Hansen’s Disease in the United States.  Note there has been a recent resurgence in Florida.

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/29/8/22-0367_article

General information from the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/leprosy/index.html

 

Here’s a link to the World Health Organization site: https://www.who.int/health-topics/leprosy#tab=tab_1

 

Finally, here’s a web page from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) about the history of the Carville program. It’s an easy read with lots of photos. I’ve now been to Carville three times and highly recommend it for those with an interest in public health history.

https://www.hrsa.gov/hansens-disease/history