Resurvey ordered in 784 leprosy-free villages in district

Nagpur: The assistant director of health services (leprosy) Nagpur has started a resurvey in 784 villages in the district before they are declared leprosy-free by the state government.
The drive is part of state government’s move to resurvey villages which had been declared leprosy-free in the last five years.
Over 1,000 villages had not reported any new leprosy cases in Nagpur district in the last five years. However, in the annual survey earlier this year, fresh cases were detected in over 200 villages in the district for the first time since 2017-18.
Dr Deepika Sakore, ADHS (leprosy), said if new cases are not found in the resurvey in these villages, they shall be declared leprosy-free.
“We have to be double sure about the status of these villages. Primary health centre staff including asha workers would be conducting door-to-door survey in village. We had to complete the task by December 31 but the deadline has been extended till March next year,” she said.
The health teams would be looking for classical leprosy markers such as numb patches on body, nodules, loss of eyebrows or eyelashes, painless ulcers, etc.
During the leprosy control and detection campaign this year, the department had found 289 new cases in urban and rural areas in the district. The department surveyed 30% high risk population in city and 100% in rural. This comes to about 9 lakh people in city and 21 lakh in rural areas.
Between March to November this year, 609 cases have been found in the district. This includes 135 from the city and 474 from rural. They also include 17 kids under 14 years of age. Four kids are from Nagpur and 13 from rural. City has 62 women patients while 273 are from rural.
“Child cases indicate chain of cases and spread of infection as they acquire it from adults,” Dr Sakore said.
She added that none among 289 found in annual survey had deformity and timely detection helped prevent grade II (fixed deformity) infection.
“After administering first dose of MDT, many multibacillary (MB) patients turn paucibacillary (PB). MB means infectious while PB is non-infectious,” she said.
Leprosy is endemic to Vidarbha region and an average 700 cases are reported every year.
Dr Sakore said people must immediately start treatment and shun stigma.