Message from President

Dear members and colleagues,

I am very honoured to be chosen as the President of this hallowed association and am excited to welcome the new Officers and Councillor of ILA on board. I thank the returning members who have successfully fulfilled their responsibilities and I wish to acknowledge the leadership provided by Roch Christian and Paul Saunderson for the previous years. I look forward to meet, network and learn from friends and colleagues during my tenure.

International Leprosy Association has always been relevant and important for the cause of leprosy across the world. I've come to think of the ILA network as one very large, multi-national team with fervour and ambition to serve leprosy. A team that provides abundant opportunities to learn, teach, mentor and share top quality leprosy knowledge. For that we are looking forward to opportunities and platforms to enable ILA to inform, advocate, brainstorm and support communities who intend to work for leprosy across the globe. In addition, we need to strengthen our membership. This new ILA web portal is an effort in that direction.

The challenges we have -to reach the ‘Zero leprosy’ as envisaged by global leprosy strategy 2030- require that we support health care providers of leprosy navigate through the last mile of their journey. I look forward to your continued participation and support in strengthening our association in this endeavour so that ILA can take its rightful place in the international leprosy domain, living up to its rich legacy.

Best regards,

P Narasimha Rao MD, PhD