THE FIFTH International Congress for Leprosy was held in THE FIFT Habana,Cuba, from April 3 to April 11, 1948. The Congress was sponsored and organized by the government of Cuba in collaboration with the International Leprosy Association. The previous International Congress of Leprosy had been held in Cairo, Egypt, in 1938. Two hundred and twenty delegates from twenty-six countries attended the Congress.
Much had happened during the previous ten years in the fields of therapeutics, immunology, pathology and epidemiology, and it was not surprising that many interesting reports were made in those fields. But from the standpoint of the dermatologist two features of the Congress are worthy of mention.
One was the agreement on the superiority of the sulfones in the treatment of leprosy. Promin® (sodium p,p'-diaminodiphenylsulfone-N, N'-didextrose sulfonate), diasone® (disodium formaldehyde sulfoxylate diaminodiphenylsulfone), and sulphetrone® (4,4'-bis[gamma-phenyl-N-propylamino diphenylsulfone-tetra sodium sulfonate] ) were, in the opinion of the Congress, the drugs of