The Government may have declared that leprosy is under control, but official data shows that the incidence of the crippling disease has been on the increase with 1,26,800 new cases having been reported in 2010-2011, 1,27,295 in 2011-12 and 1,34,752 in 2012-13 in the country.
Officials in the Union Health Ministry warned that if timely corrective steps were not taken, all efforts initiated in the past will prove futile when the disease was brought down to a level of elimination i.e. less than one case per 10,000 population at the national level by December 2005.
“The new cases are being reported from many States and immediate steps are needed to contain them,” said a senior health ministry official. He noted that till the National leprosy Elimination Programme NlEP was a vertical programme, it was run by specially trained staff under the district leprosy officers till 2002-03 with adequate strength and mobility support.
However, the situation started worsening following the integration of leprosy services with the General Health Care (GHC) system since 2002-2003 to be completed by March 2005.
“At that time only 25 per cent of the erstwhile vertical staff (Para medical worker, physiotherapist, health educator and others) were retained with NlEP and rest of the staff were surrendered to the GHC system to work as multi-purpose workers and supervisors.
“Moreover, during the last six years, a number of persons have retired on superannuation and in most of the states, these posts remained unfilled. This resulted in shortage of manpower like PMW at block Primary Health Centre level,” said the official.Since the GHC staff has to perform other programme activities and therefore to provide one person dedicated for leprosy work is getting difficult. In high endemic districts and blocks having ANCDR, 10/100,000 population, due care could not be provided to the persons affected by leprosy, he pointd out.
Concerned that the level of quality services is not being attained, plans are afoot to post one PMW in each high endemic block PHC while for the first time Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) will be involved to bring out suspected cases for diagnosis at PHC and will follow up the patients for completion of treatment.