Leprosy, which has blighted mankind for thousands of years, is still far from being eradicated, afflicting half a million people every year even though the disease is completely curable.

　　In the 21st century, parts of Africa and south Asia as well as Brazil in Latin America still count annually thousands of cases of leprosy which if there is a delay in diagnosis can leave victims permanently scarred and often horribly disfigured.

　　Figures revealed on Sunday's world leprosy day showed that in 2003 there were about 515,000 cases, of which 12 percent were children, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

　　But organisations working to combat leprosy, say that those figures hide the grim reality of about 600,000 to 700,000 new cases a year.

　　According to the medical organisations of the Order of Malta, some 2,000 people a day are afflicted by leprosy, which eats away at the skin, mucuous membranes and nerves and was once considered so highly contagious that sufferers were shunned and banished to leper colonies where they were left to their fate.

　　The WHO had pledged to work to eradicate leprosy in the year 2000, and then re-launched its target for 2005.

　　But it acknowleged that at the end of 2003, leprosy remained a public health issue in 15 African countries including Madagascar, Tanzania, Mozambique, as well as India and Nepal, and Brazil where one in 10,000 people suffered from the disease.

　　"We shouldn't talk about eradicating the disease, as that word just creates confusion", it's more that the WHO wants to eliminate leprosy "as a public health problem," said Pierre Bobin, head of the French Association of Leprosy Research.

　　Non-governmental organisations working on the ground insist at last 60 countries have registered cases of the disease.

　　The first visible signs of the disease are the appearance of stains on the skin. But contrary to urban myth, leprosy is not that contagious, being passed on by nasal secretions. Ninety percent of people who come into contact with the bacterium do not develop the disease.