Inaction led to lakhs of new leprosy patients

A decade of government inaction on the leprosy eradication front has led to surfacing of lakhs of new patients in the last four years, compelling the central government to delay the eradication target date by more than a decade.

“Undoubtedly, there were 10 years of laxity in the programme because of which case detection was slow. We are doing well from 2016 onwards and now aims to making India leprosy free by 2030,” Anil Kumar, the deputy director general at the Union Health Ministry's in charge of National Leprosy Elimination Programme told DH.

Earlier the phase out target was 2018, but numbers kept piling up, thanks to those ten lax years. In 2017-18, there were 1,26,164 new leprosy cases, which is slightly less than the 2016-17 count of 1,35,485 fresh cases.

Bihar, Chhattishgarh, Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Odisha and West Bengal are having the maximum number of leprosy patients with Bihar and UP topping the chart.

The previous two years 2015-16 and 2014-15 too recorded more than 1.25 lakhs of new leprosy cases as a grim reminder that the battle with one of the world's most stigmatised diseases is far from over in India.

The trouble has its genesis in 2005 after India achieved the elimination target. In technical parlance, elimination meant lowering the disease prevalence to less than one person per 10,000 population, but it was misunderstood by many within and outside the government.

“As a result, funding dried up, NLEP staff were shifted to the HIV/AIDS programme and the government decided it would test the patients only when they come to a health centre. The zeal was gone,” said P Narasimha Rao, a Hyderabad-based doctor working on leprosy.

The problem with passive detection was the long gestation period for the disease to manifest and the stigma associated with the disease.

A petition filed in the Supreme Court by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy shows that there are 119 central and state laws in which leprosy can be sighted as a ground to discriminate against a person by law.

“Also in our student days, we were trained about leprosy detection during the MBBS programme. Such trainings don't exist anymore after the numbers came down from 60 lakhs in 1982 to 2-3 lakhs in 2005,” said V M Katoch, former director general at the Indian Council of Medical Research.

From 2015, the health ministry began its active door-to-door campaign to find out the hidden cases and treat them. An Indian vaccine against leprosy was tried as a pilot project in Gujarat and may be expanded to Bihar.

“At least a decade of sustained campaign is required to eradicate the disease, once considered a scourge in the society,” Katoch said.