Leprosy in a Vietnamese Adoptee
1 Departments of Pediatrics, Surgery, and Dermatology, University of Colorado Medical Center, Denver
The arrival in the United States of large numbers of Vietnamese war orphans and refugees means that physicians in this country may encounter exotic diseases that they have not been trained to recognize. We report here the case of a 10-year-old Vietnamese adoptee with tuberculoid leprosy. (This case was described in a brief letter to the editor, Pediatrics 61:330, 1978.) Our purpose is to remind physicians that leprosy is a common infection in Vietnam and that clinical symptoms may not appear for several years because of the long incubation period.
CASE HISTORY
A 10-year-old girl was seen in March 1977 because of a swollen finger and a tender mass in her palm.




