Diseases
p. 23 · Read in the full issue
Combating Tropical
NEW treatments for leprosy and filar iasis, the incapacitating and dis figuring diseases encountered in some of the islands, have been under trial, and
encouraging results have been reported.
The drug sulphetrone has been in use in parts of Fiji and New Guinea for the past 18 months and has cured a number of patients suffering from lepromatous leprosy—people who until recently had little hope of any recovery.
Filariasis, a parasitic infection which invades the lymphatic tissue and the blood stream, producing gross enlarge ment, most frequently of the legs and arms, with a characteristic elephantoid appearance and deformity, is being fought with banocide—a brand of diethyl carbamazine which has already produced almost 100 per cent, cure in sufferers.