Dr Casimiro B Lara (1896-1981) was born on 4 March 1896 in Magsingal, Ilocos Sur, Philippines. He obtained his medical degree from the College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, in 1919, after which he joined the Philippine General Hospital as Resident Physician and the Department of Medicine, College of Medicine, University of the Philippines, as Assistant in Medicine (1919-1922). He was granted a fellowship at the Mayo Foundation, University of Minnesota, U.S.A., where he spent two years (1924-1926) in experimental work and wrote on the pharmacology of chaulmoogra derivatives.

He was appointed Supervising Physician, Culion Leper Colony in 1922, was promoted to Chief Physician in 1924, and became Chief of the Colony in 1947, a position that he held until his retirement from government service in 1962. He was reappointed Consultant Leprologist (without compensation) on 27 December 1962 to continue his research work on leprosy in children up to the last moment of his life.

In 1964 Dr Lara was first appointed as a member of the Leprosy Expert Advisory Panel of the WHO to serve for five years. He was reappointed in the same capacity three times, to serve for two years each time. In 1966, he carried out a study on DDS chemoprophylaxis among contacts, still apparently non-leprous children in Culion.

Extracted from Fernando A Jose, “Obituary” International Journal of Leprosy 50.2 (1982): 213