Leprosy
Mailing List, July 8th, 2009
Ref.:
4 new leprosy cases in one family of 5 house holds
From:
Bhatki W. S.,
Mumbai
,
India
Dear
Dr Noto,
Greetings
from
Mumbai
,
India
. I have received three
brief comments to my message (Bhatki W. S. LML July 3rd ,
2009). They were from
Prof. P K Das, Dr A Mondjo and from yourself.
Thank you very much for these. I
express my sincere thanks particularly to Prof. Das for taking
interest in my recent experience on contact examination. You
are requested to kindly communicate my response as follows through the
LML.
The
leprosy cases (i.e. 4 new cases in one family of 5 house holds)
mentioned in the manuscript referred above have not been published any
where. The cases,
however, had been registered for MDT and included as new cases in
the monthly report of the respective month submitted to the Asstt.
Director of Health Services, Leprosy (Mumbai), the local
Government authority for leprosy.
There
was a time when leprosy was highly prevalent, we used to get families
with multiple cases particularly in slums. However,
now when the leprosy prevalence is drastically reduced to a level of
elimination, the incidence of multiple cases in one family is very
rare.
The
intention of my communication on contact examination was mainly to
sensitize and motivate all those who are working in the leprosy
programme for undertaking proper contact examination if there are
multiple child cases in the family. If
this is added with simple smear examination, there are chances that
the source case, if any, among adult house holds could be
detected significantly early.
I do not think that there will be adequate number of families
with multiple cases to take up any research project involving PGL-1 or
other serological studies. I will be happy to meet Prof. Das in
person when he will visit Mumbai and discuss with him the related
issues. I will certainly
communicate his regards to Dr Ganapathi.
Thanks and regards.
Dr W S Bhatki
Maharshtra Lokahita Seva Mandal,
Mumbai
,
India
