Changing Profile of Leprosy in a Tertiary Care Hospital

Abstract

WHO (World Health Organization) has fixed the target of zero grade 2 (G2D) deformity among pediatric leprosy patients and reduction of new leprosy cases with G2D to less than one case per million population, to be achieved by 2020. It has also mentioned the performing indicators to evaluate the progress of leprosy control program. We undertook this study to find out what changes the leprosy clinic at our hospital had witnessed in terms of the WHO performance indicators and whether we had progressed toward reaching the goal fixed by WHO. The important indicators such as number of new cases, percentage of MB cases, child cases, and G2D cases were examined from the year 2012-13 to 2016-17. Although a significant reduction in G2D cases, MB cases and child cases were noted, which is quite encouraging, yet the numbers of annual new cases detected remained almost static during the study period, indicating persistence of active transmission of infection and the need for augmented active surveillance (leprosy case detection campaign), contact tracing, community awareness, stigma reduction and training.