Leprosy
Mailing List, September 11th, 2009
Ref.:
“Leprosy eliminated? … A wake-up call from
Liberia
”
From:
Koning Pieter de,
Würzburg
,
Germany
Dear
Salvatore,
Please
allow me to respond to Dr. Vijayakumaran’s
comments (LML August 27, 2009).
The
point I was trying to make is that almost all new cases were detected
during “outreach village surveys”, none of the cases were
referred. They were of
course the result of deficient basic health services elsewhere, but
had it not been for the outreach programme, none of the cases would
have been found and none would have reached the “referral”
hospital. This makes you
wonder about the areas the outreach programme never reached, for
whatever reason. I agree
it is not entirely appropriate to extrapolate to the entire region and
that a complete situation analysis is necessary…
My
fear is that this analysis, if it ever takes place and is done
properly, will come up with figures far more disastrous than my
(probably very conservative) calculations.
Kind
regards,
Dr.
Pieter de Koning, MD, MPH
Medical
Advisor
Deutsche
Lepra- und Tuberkulosehilfe e.V (DAHW)
Mariannhillstraße
1c, 97074 Würzburg
Telefon:
++49 (0)931 7948-113, Fax: -160
E-mail:
pieter.de-koning(at)dahw.de
