New leprosy cases see drop in Hyderabad as pandemic hits screening efforts

Hyderabad: In 2005, the World Health Organisation had declared India leprosy-free. But over the years, it has made a comeback across multiple states, said health experts participating in the International Leprosy Congress (ILC2022), in Hyderabad on Wednesday.

And even though the official numbers are still low — more in the last two years due to Covid-19 — they stressed the need for extensive screening to keep the spread under control. Currently, India and Nepal record over 60% of leprosy cases across the world.

“As per the ministry of health and welfare data, the reported new cases of leprosy in India, in 2019, were 1.1 lakh. This dropped to 75,394 in 2021. But while this decrease may look positive on paper, it implies that almost half the new cases were lost and it did not surface on the public health domain,” said Dr P Narasimha Rao, organising secretary of ILC2022.

This is true of Hyderabad as well, said Dr Nirmala P Moillakalva, additional district medical health officer for AIDS and Leprosy elimination, Hyderabad. According to her study, in 2017-18 there were about 144 new cases here, which dipped to 108 in 2021-22 — possibly due to the pandemic impacting the identification of new cases.

“Areas like Golconda and Puranapul still throw up a sizeable cases,” said Nirmala adding: “One positive step that we have taken in city is extensive contact tracing. In 2021-22 when we had 108 new cases, we tracked down 438 contacts and screened them. Two of them were found to have contracted leprosy. This extensive contract tracing helped us administer prophylaxis rifampicin to the exposed yet healthy individuals,” she added.