In 30 countries on five of the Earth’s continents, three to four million people have leprosy, or suffer its disabling aftereffects such as blindness, loss of hands and feet and facial disfigurement. Eleven thousand new cases are found every week, 15 to 20 percent of them children.

But thanks to MDT, a three-drug treatment approved by the World Health Organization 15 years ago, the scourge is no longer incurable or even terribly contagious. According to the leader of American Leprosy Missions, a Christian group that has been battling the disease and aiding its victims since 1906, MDT and growing public acceptance have brought new hope to sufferers everywhere.

“ALM joins the World Health Organization in its goal to eliminate Hansen’s Disease (leprosy) as a major world health problem,” says Eugene Wilson, Information and Budget Director of the organization.

Victims of Hansen’s disease are no longer isolated in “leper colonies.” They work, attend school, and take part in public affairs. In most cases, the disease becomes non-contagious a few days after the beginning of MDT treatment, and is cured in six months to two years.

American Leprosy Missions, supported by church and individual contributions, dispenses MDT to leprosy patients around the world, treating them in hospitals, at outdoor clinics and from the backs of medical vans. ALM also gives artificial limbs to the severely disabled; it bandages ulcerated hands and feet, performs diagnostic skin tests, teaches patients how to protect themselves from injury and infection. And it keeps mountains of records.

Record keeping threatened to overcome the organization at one time — until ALM discovered Laserfiche Document Imaging. With more than 20 oversize filing cabinets crammed with documents in several languages, it needed a filing and retrieval system that could enable multiple users at different PC screens to study the same document simultaneously. LRA Imaging Systems, of Greenville, studied ALM’s requirements and recommended Laserfiche NLM-2 document imaging software, inexpensively installed on a network linking many personal computers already in use at the ALM offices.

Paper documents which used to fill the filing cabinets are being run through digital scanners at a second or less per page. The electronic impulses are then laser-burned into CD-ROM disks. One disk can record 14,000 to 21,000 sheets of paper, or the contents of one filing cabinet. And any one of those thousands of documents can be called to the screen, or several screens, instantly, by an operator tapping a few keys.

If the document being scanned is printed or typed, it can be “OCR’d “-that is, the system reads it digitally and creates a full-text list of every word it contains. Then the operator can recall that document by typing a word or phrase in the original record. And if he/she is unsure of the spelling, a “fuzzy logic” feature allows for a given percent of error in search accuracy.

Finally, ALM plans to have LRA integrate Laserfiche with translation-aid software to facilitate dealing with documents that arrive in languages other than English. “If they can do this, it will be almost as miraculous as curing leprosy,” said Mr. Wilson.

Tags: international

Posted on Friday, October 24th, 2003 at 12:13 pm under Customer Stories, Other Industries. You can comment on this post.