Nigeria to receive leprosy drugs after a year-long delay

7/3/2025 17:03

The World Health Organization says it will send leprosy drugs to Nigeria this weekend after resolving testing hold-ups that contributed to a year-long delay in thousands of patients, including children, getting the medicine they need to prevent irreversible disability.



Africa's most populous nation, Nigeria reports over 1,000 cases of leprosy yearly, a disease caused by a bacterium, Mycobacterium leprae, and mainly affecting the skin, peripheral nerves, and eyes. It is curable with multi-drug therapy, but without treatment, the disease progresses and causes disfiguring sores and disabilities like blindness and paralysis. Patients also face significant stigma.



But Nigeria ran out of stock of the multi-drug therapy in early 2024 as a bureaucratic delay in supplies and new domestic testing regulations on imported medicines held up the drugs in India, where one of the components is made.



A WHO spokesperson told Reuters that Nigeria had run out of leprosy medications, and the U.N. health agency, which organises shipments of the drug, had asked for a one-time waiver on the new testing policy. In January that waiver was granted.