Break the chain: On leprosy in India
Despite progress in reducing leprosy prevalence, India faces challenges in meeting elimination targets due to uneven disease distribution and persistent transmission. The government is scaling up surveillance and exploring new vaccination strategies to address these gaps.
Why it matters
Leprosy remains a significant public health challenge in India, requiring sustained surveillance and targeted interventions to prevent disability and transmission.
While the prevalence of leprosy among adults and children and the grade-2 disability rate have dropped in India over the last decade, its continued transmission in many pockets constrains India’s ability to meet targets outlined in the National Strategic Plan (NSP) and Roadmap for Leprosy 2023-2027. By 2005, the national prevalence had dropped to under 1 case per 10,000 people, prompting the World Health Organization (WHO) to declare that India had “eliminated [leprosy] as a public health problem”. However, the government became complacent and allowed the folding of the leprosy surveillance programme into the general health system. Multi-drug treatment regimens also shortened the time for which patients remained formally registered, allowing prevalence to fall and transmission to continue. Disability due to leprosy began to rise in the early 2010s, prompting door-to-door screening. Today, the NSP is right to focus on cutting transmission, in line with WHO.
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