Has the declaration of the elimination of leprosy allowed to spread it again? – The New Indian Express

NEW DELHI: The "eliminated" leprosy of India 13 years ago may well be slowly pushing back to represent a new challenge for the health system. More than 1.35 lakh new cases were detected in 2016 – higher than in 2015 when it was 1.25 lakh. "We have come a long way since the 1990s, when the prevalence rate of leprosy was 26 per 10,000 people," Oommen C Kurian, researcher at the think tank Observer Research Foundation says The Sunday Standard. "However, as we switched from active surveillance ten years ago to a pbadive and voluntary registration of cases, which reduced the number of patients on paper, things on the ground did not occur. did not improve. "

Kurian believes that the pressure is mounting It also highlights how health workers stop making home visits to identify undetected cases, instead moving to the voluntary registration of patients. Between 2004 and 2007, the detection of new cases dropped by 75%.

Sridhar Shandilya, a leprosy expert in Pune, said that India was deliberately beginning to underestimate the disease in order to paint a good image. -goal. "Statistically, we were fed that the disease is declining, but the cases of disability were increasing.The leprosy control program of recent years realized how much it was making a mistake in not identifying the hidden cases. "

He pointed out that senior political leaders do not seem to have learned from the mistakes of the past – referring to a statement The Union Health Minister, JP Nadda, said that the India was "free" of leprosy in 2018 – a promise that seems even less profound than the 2005 statement.

Anil Kumar, director of the Ministry of Health's National Program for the Eradication of Leprosy of the family. pointed out that the government declared India leprosy-free when cases fell to less than 1 per 10,000 in 2005, in accordance with WHO guidelines. "Since last year, case detection campaigns are underway in some districts.We realized that sending front-line workers to identify hidden cases was important."

According to Nikita Sarah, advocacy and communications officer at the Leprosy Mission Trust India, it was important that the government take the necessary steps to intensify its efforts to send more and more patients for treatment rather than sticking to the rhetoric of elimination, all the more so when a drug-resistant version of the disease is increasing.