Leprosy mailing list – February
19th, 2006
Ccn: all.
Ref.:
·
India reaches the
“elimination” target;
·
the Kathmandu
recommendations;
·
promoting
self-reporting.
From: S
Noto, Genoa, Italy.
Dear
Dr Rao,
Thank
you very much for your message (P N Rao, LML Feb. 13th,
2005).
I
have read the report you were referring to: National programme
managers for leprosy elimination – Report of an Inter-country
meeting, Kathmandu, Nepal, 6-8 January 2005, WHO regional office for
South-east Asia. It is clear that the influence of
operational factors on the registered prevalence and incidence of
leprosy in the last years has been enormous.
It
is possible that in India the leprosy case load was inflated by
operational factors, for example during the period 1996-2002. On the
other end, from 2003 onwards it seems that new operational factors are
trying to decrease the leprosy burden. This way of acting
was wrong when the numbers were inflated and it would also be wrong
now, if numbers were artificially deflated. The reason is the same.
Operational problems should not introduce confounding factors in the
statistics of leprosy.
In
the above-mentioned report Dr Derek Lobo highlights factors that have
inflated the leprosy caseload in the past but, no words of caution are
used to avoid artificial decrease of the leprosy burden now.
A
major topic to be addressed is the one related to case finding
activities. In this respect I find the recommendation “promoting
self-reporting”, a good one.
Best
regards,
S.
Noto
