Leprosy mailing list – July 11th,
2006
Ref.:
The burden of leprosy in Africa
From:
Noto S., Genoa, Italy
Dear all,
In attachment are data
about the burden of leprosy in Africa.
They consist of three figures; two describe the trend of the
“new case detection”, one reports about the “percentage of
children among new cases”. All
three of them refer to the WHO African Region. In order to
facilitate opening the same document is enclosed in both formats: Word
and the original Excel file.
Figure 1. shows the trend of
the indicator “new case detection” in Africa from 1985 to 2004. The numbers related to the
years 1985-2003 are reported from the website of the WHO Regional
Office for Africa in Harare. This
source reports till 2003. The
2004 datum is taken from: WER n. 34, 26 Aug. 2005. Starting in 1999
the graphs shows a decline in the trend.
Figure 2. refers to the same
indicator and to the same WHO Region as above. The data from 1994 to 2002 are
from the “WHO Leprosy Elimination Project: Status Report 2003”,
WHO Geneva. The series is
completed using data from the WER n. 34-2005 for the years 2003-2004. According to this graph there
is no decline in the trend of new cases in Africa.
The differences between the
two graphs are due to different numbers reported by the two sources,
Harare and Geneva. Information
on what might have influenced case detection and reporting in these
years in Africa would make it easier to formulate conclusions.
The figure 3. refers to the
percentage of children (0-14 years) among the new cases from 1985 to
2003. The WHO Regional
Office for Africa publishes these data on its website. The series unfortunately is
not complete; data for the years 2000 and 2001 are missed. According to this source in
the years 2002–2003 the percentage of children among new cases was
between 8 and 10 percent. This
indicates a still high distribution of M leprae within the
relevant communities.
Best regards,
S. Noto
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Figure 1. New case
detection of leprosy in Africa
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Data adapted from:
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a. The source of
the data from 1985 to 2003 is the website of the WHO Regional
Office for Africa
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http://www.afro.who.int/leprosy/trend1985-2003-20oct2004.xls
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b. The source of the data
for 2004 is the WER n.
34, 26 August 2005
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Figure 2. New case detection
of leprosy in Africa
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Data adapted from:
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a. Data 1994 - 2002 are from
"WHO Leprosy Elimination Project: Status Report 2003"
page 8
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http://www.who.int/lep/Reports/s20042.pdf
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b. The source for the data
for 2003 and 2004 is the WER
n. 34, 26 August 2005
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