The Federal Government of Nigeria has been challenged to approach the eradication of leprosy with the will and determination it eradicated poliomyelitis in the country.

The Funds Development Manager of the Leprosy Mission of Nigeria (LMN), Terver Anyor said on Wednesday in Ilorin at a seminar for media practitioners, that Nigeria would only be postponing the evil day if it continues to pretend as if the bacteria causing disease had been eradicated in the country.

The LMN is a non profitable but a religious organization founded in 1874 by an Irish Missionary who mixed freely with persons affected with the disease towards reducing the stigma and discrimination suffered by them.

Anyor disclosed that Kano State had the highest reported cases of 305 of persons affected by Leprosy in Nigeria in the year 2013, adding that it was followed by Zamfara state with 260 cases and Jigawa state with 212 reported cases. With three reported cases in the year under a review, Bayelsa state had the least number of reported cases.

"At present, there is no single case of reported leprosy in Europe, because the governments of the countries in the continent fought the disease head long. But here in Nigeria, even though the governments pay the salaries of our workers, they don't give regular subventions to us again," he said.

"Since the year 1993, the government had only released funds for the control of the disease about five times. We are talking of eradicating the disease and not controlling it. We need to muster all efforts like we did in the case of polio to eradicate leprosy as well in this country.

Anyor while criticizing the stigma and discrimination suffered by the persons affected with the disease in Nigeria, believed that ignorance of the causative virus of the disease could be responsible.

He said, like Tuberculosis, the disease is air borne but unlike the Tuberculosis could not be contacted via physical contacts with the patients. Besides, he said those who lost their fingers, toes and eye lids did not lose such because of leprosy, but due to loss of sensation in the nerves of their bodily systems.

He noted: "persons affected by leprosy and their family members should be treated as people with dignity and are entitled, on an equal basis with others, to all the human rights and fundamental freedoms proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as in other relevant international human rights instruments to which their respective states are parties. These should also include the Convention on the Rights of Persons with disabilities.

"Persons affected by leprosy and their family members should have the same rights as everyone else with respect to marriage, family and parenthood. To this end, no one should be denied the rights to marry on the grounds of leprosy, leprosy should not constitute a ground for divorce and a child should not be separated from his or her parents on the grounds of leprosy."

He canvassed state's propelled early detection programmes of the disease noting that it would prevent stigmatisation of those suffering it since they would not likely loose their fingers or toes to it.