Gurugram: Health department to begin survey to detect cases of leprosy

After suspending active disease surveillance for leprosy — a bacterial ailment which continues to be reported from some clusters in Gurugram — the health department will conduct a door-to-door survey this week in the district’s vulnerable neighbourhoods

After suspending active disease surveillance for leprosy — a bacterial ailment which continues to be reported from some clusters in Gurugram — the health department will conduct a door-to-door survey this week in the district’s vulnerable neighbourhoods. While officials said they do not anticipate a gross increase in the incidence of leprosy, they said that the likelihood of undetected cases remains high.

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“There are currently 20 active patients under treatment for two kinds of leprosy, but they have either self-reported their symptoms or were already in treatment before March 2020. ASHA workers usually conduct routine surveillance for leprosy, but since they were busy with contact-tracing of Covid-19 patients in May and June of last year, we had to suspend our campaign to actively detect new cases,” said Dr Vinit Yadav, district leprosy officer, Gurugram.

A total of 148 cases of leprosy have been reported from the district since 2018, of which 20 cases are active patients. The majority of these were detected either prior to the Covid-19 induced lockdown, while a few self-reported their symptoms. “However, in case of self-reporting, many times the patients have already suffered irreversible damage to their skin and limbs. The incubation period for the disease can take up to five years. This is why active surveillance needs to resume urgently so that clinical interventions can be made in time,” said Dr Yadav.

A total of 120 ASHA workers will, over the next two weeks, survey nearly 27,000 individual households for the disease, in those areas where leprosy has been previously detected over the past three years. The health department has also enrolled male volunteers to assist ASHA workers in certain cases, such as when male patients need to be undressed for screening. “We have completed the training programme for medical officers, who will brief healthcare workers on Monday. The door-to-door survey will begin within this week itself,” Yadav added.

As per a centrally revamped scheme to increase surveillance for the disease — which was declared to be statistically eradicated in 2011 — workers will be provided an incentive of ₹200 for each household surveyed, while the incentive for detecting individual cases is ₹600 per diagnosis. Informal housing clusters, which suffer from poor infrastructure and sanitation, are the most vulnerable.

“We assume that 5 percent of any given population is at risk, particularly in slum clusters. Of the current group of active leprosy patients, 15 are from slum areas in urban Gurugram, while the rest are from similar settlements in Farrukhnagar and Sohna,” said Dr Yadav. He added that, starting this year, all neighbourhoods with a low incidence of leprosy (equal to one case per 10,000 people) will be surveyed annually, while half-yearly surveys will be conducted in areas with a higher incidence of the disease, i.e. those areas with more than one notified case per 10,000 people.