Khan is one of the celebrities endorsing the fight against leprosy in what is being touted as the world's biggest ever campaign for the elimination of the disease. Sachin Tendulkar, Saurav Ganguly, Jaspal Bhatti, Mukesh Khanna, Jackie Shroff and Madhuri Dixit are some of the celebrated names who will explode myths about a disease that is ``entirely curable through modern medication.''The campaign has been launched by BBC World Service Trust, the NGO arm of the BBC's external services.

Under directions of the Ministry of Health, it has been developed in partnership with Doordarshan and All India Radio and will be transmitted on both the national and regional networks of the two public broadcasters. ``This isthe beginning of the end of Leprosy in India. The objective is to encourage leprosy patients to report their symptoms and get treatment free-of-charge with the successful multi-drug therapy (MDT) recommended by the World Health Organization as the most successful against the disease,'' announces Peter Gill, executive producer, BBC World Service Trust.``MDT has revolutionsed the worldwide outlook for the elimination of leprosy. Although it is one of the oldest diseases known to man, many misconceptions related to it lead to social ostracisation. We hope to tackle the stigma surrounding leprosy, through the campaign,'' he adds.

This is the first phase of a year-long BBC project costing Pound 1.1 million funded by the Department for International Development (DFID), the aid arm of the British government.The radio and television campaigns form a vital part of the government efforts to create awareness about its treatment, in the run up to the anti-leprosy day on January 30. ``India has the dubious distinctionof having more than 60 per cent of the world's leprosy patients. On the positive side, we also have the most patients cured of leprosy.

Though the Year 2000 target for elimination has been extended to Year 2005, we believe that complete elimination of the disease is possible in the near future,'' says Dr N S Dharmshaktu, deputy director general, leprosy, Ministry of Health.Alque Padamsee, creative consultant to the project, feels that as a people we don't know much about leprosy. ``The face of leprosy that we recognise most is the one misrepresented by cinema and the media-people outside a temple with stumps for fingers and distorted faces,'' he says.

Our prejudices against leprosy patients have, in turn, led to many misconceptions about the disease. ``People feel that it is not curable, contagious and hereditary. To overcome all these myths, we need to go beyond mere information. We need good communication and the difference between information and communication is motivation,'' says Padamsee.

It isthis motivation that the celebrities will extend in the 25 television advertising and 40 radio spots created by the DD and AIR officials in the country's five most leprosy-endemic states-West Bengal, Orissa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. To reach the largest possible rural audience, the radio spots have been ``transcreated'' into 15 local languages and dialects across the five target states.In addition to the creation of the social advertising campaign, the BBC is partnering Doordarshan in the production of a a special hour-long programme to be telecast on DD-I on January 30, the anti-leprosy day. ``We have also approached satellite channels like Star and Zee for slots and the popular music channel MTV has already agreed to run a leprosy theme week leading up to January 30,'' says Gill.

The leprosy campaign is the largest health promotion so far undertaken by BBC World Service Trust. Other projects supported by them include a trachoma elimination campaign in Tanzania, a media contribution to theongoing polio eradication programme in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh and a leprosy campaign in Nepal that succeeded in curing 11,700 patients.

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