Indonesia has the third highest number of new leprosy cases in the world after India and Brazil, Health Minister Endang Rahayu Sedyaningsih said. "Indonesia's leprosy burden is still relatively high. The number of new cases is still relatively high and so is the frequency of the disease having caused physical deformities," ANTARA quoted the minister as saying at a function to mark World Leprosy Day at the health ministry here Monday. For 2010, India had reported 126,600 new leprosy cases and Brazil 34,894, she said. For the same year, Indonesia had reported 17,012 new cases with 1,882 or 10.71 percent of them discovered when the persons involved were already in a second-degree state of deformity or suffering from visible deformities. In addition, in 1,904 or 11.2 percent of the Indonesian cases, the sufferers were children, Endang said. The figures showed that leprosy was still infecting people in Indonesia and late discovery was still happening frequently.
