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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | A silent emergency -Oommen C Kurian

A silent emergency -Oommen C Kurian

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published Published on Jul 18, 2018   modified Modified on Jul 18, 2018
-The Indian Express

Rising cases of leprosy among Adivasis call for urgent public action.

India officially eliminated Leprosy in 2005 by bringing the Prevalence Rate below 1/10000 at the national level. However, the National Health Policy 2017 (NHP), which will guide the health policy direction of the country over the next decade or so, still has elimination of Leprosy as a national level target. It is highly unlikely that India achieves elimination of Leprosy at the state or district levels any time soon. Yet, elimination of Leprosy remains a pet topic, and many ministers including the PM have called for it, and the health minister has reportedly reassured the country in June that India will be Leprosy Free in 2018 itself. The discussion is clearly about national level elimination, yet again.

While official data says that the number of new Leprosy cases detected during 2016-17 is 135485 and the prevalence Rate per 10000 population as on March 2017 for India is 0.66, it is established that the number underestimates the real Leprosy burden. The Health Minister himself is on record saying that there may be 2,50,000 new Leprosy cases every year, based on a sample survey by Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) conducted in 2008-2011. Interestingly, the results of this pan India survey have not yet been released to the public.

India is also known to have had several discriminatory laws against persons affected by Leprosy. One of the oldest laws (The Lepers Act of 1898), which sanctioned the arrest and segregation of persons affected by leprosy into ‘leper asylums’ was repealed only as late as in May 2016, by the current government. Before the national level repealment, even though 12 states and five union territories of India had abandoned its application within their respective jurisdictions, it continued to be in force in the remaining states and union territories.

India has had major advances against Leprosy in the past. Internationally, prevalence was brought under one case per 10000 population by 2000, and there was pressure on most endemic countries like India to achieve the same at the national level at least by 2005, marking a significant milestone in the elimination of leprosy as a public health problem. The current global prevalence is estimated by the World Health Organisation (WHO) to be 0.23 per 10000 population. In 2017, India along with Brazil and Indonesia are the only countries where more than 10000 new cases are reported per year. For the year 2017, 135485 out of the 204686 new Leprosy cases detected globally were in India – a staggering 66%. In other words, two out of three new global Leprosy cases are detected in India, according to official data.

The somewhat forced 2005 declaration of Leprosy elimination had a dampening effect on the fight against the disease by reducing funds available, making sure cases are not registered, and shifting focus and resources to other diseases. After 2005, curiously, the number of new Leprosy cases detected in India remained around 1.3 lakhs every year, keeping the national prevalence rate safely well within the elimination target.

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The Indian Express, 17 July, 2018, https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/leprosy-cases-in-india-in-adivasis-5262393/lite/


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