Leprosy Mailing List – July 31st, 2007
Ref.: Reduction in new cases of leprosy reported to World Health
Organization
From: Noto S., Genoa, Italy
Dear Drs Bobin and Post,
Thank you very much for your
messages both dated LML July 25th, 2007. Dr Bobin’s message was also
very kindly translated in English by Dr Bryceson and circulated by LML
July 30th, 2007.
You noticed that the Weekly
Epidemiological Record (WER) reports leprosy new case detection trends
referring to different countries for the year 2005 and 2006 and for
this reason they are not comparable.
In statistics this is a major problem.
I wonder why the data were
not reported in the following manner: time, place, population, new
cases detection and new case detection rate? Always including the
information about the populations where the cases are detected.
Dr Post’s hypothesis is
that some countries did not communicate the data to the World Health
Organization (WHO). If
this were the case it would have been simple to explain. Just stop the global leprosy
trend to the year 2005 and not publishing it for the year 2006.
But now, what about the
previous years? The series 1994-2000 is from WER, n. 1, 4 January 2002
and the series 2001-2006 is from WER, n.25, 22 June 2007; are they
comparable?
They are useful, because they still give the
brute numbers officially reported to WHO per WHO Region and per year. They are not comparable
because rates cannot be calculated.
Taking into account both your
comments, the global reduction in new cases of leprosy should be less
that the one reported by the WER but in anyway, there is a reduction. I suppose that this concept
would be confirmed by the availability of rates.
Best regards,
S. Noto
