With leprosy still a public health concern — at least one lakh new patients being detected annually — the Government has proposed regular surveillance of the disease and doling out an incentive of Rs 1,000 to health workers for the screening rounds.
The Union Health Ministry recently released the operational guidelines aiming to intensify the screening on yearly or twice-a-year basis in select areas depending on the leprosy prevalence rates there.
However, villages or urban areas that have not recorded any leprosy cases for three years or longer will not be included in the screening. But the health workers there will receive incentives of up to Rs 250 for the detection of a leprosy case and up to Rs 600 to ensure the patient completes the treatment, as per the guidelines issued by Union Health Minister Dr Harshvardhan.
Though India had in 2005 declared leprosy “eliminated”, defining the threshold as when the country’s prevalence rate fell below one per 10,000 population, cases continue to pop up even among children showing that transmission is happening in the community.
The new guidelines aims to widen the effort for case detection through regular household screening, citing high prevalence in certain pockets in several states and the challenge of diagnosing leprosy among the urban poor.
Screening has been proposed once a year in areas with prevalence rates lower than one per 10,000, and twice a year in areas with prevalence rates higher than one per 10,000. Any area with even a single child patient will be subject to two screenings a year, as per the guidelines.
Welcoming the move, Dr Vivek Lal, CEO of Sasakawa-India Leprosy Foundation (S-ILF) said that of course active surveillance is very important as the patients may not even realise that he/she is suffering from the disease and may sit through the condition till it turns into visible deformity.
Also, its high time that all type of health workers and doctors even those from the private sector are roped in and made awareness about the disease so that appropriate treatment could be given to the patient at the earliest, Dr Lal said.
Despite various efforts, India continues to account for 60 per cent of new cases reported globally each year and is among the 22 “global priority countries” that contribute 95 per cent of world numbers of leprosy warranting a sustained effort to bring the numbers down. The Government’s recent strategy of innovative Leprosy Case Detection Campaign (LCDC), has paid results in the detection of 34 000 new cases in 2016 from highly endemic pockets, which accounted for 25 per cent of annual new cases.
Of the total new cases detected, almost 50 per cent were multibacillary leprosy and the child rate was about 8.7 per cent, which was similar to the previous year’s figures, both indicating continued transmission of leprosy in the community.