Does Leprosy Need a Stronger Surveillance System Now? A point of view article.

Multi Drug Therapy (MDT) for leprosy was introduced by WHO in 1982 and the programme has been implemented for more than 3 decades. The main presumption out of the PR based elimination was that with reduction of disease load below 1 per 10000 persons, the transmission of leprosy would be arrested resulting in disappearance of the disease. MDT made the disease description, definition and epidemiological indicators so different that it ceases to be like any other disease. To eliminate the leprosy totally from the country needs following activities: 1. Scaling up of some sentinel sites (SS) to surveillance units (SUs), 2. Source of information, 3. Authentication and standardisation, 4. Generation of own data, 5. Need for a skin smear laboratory, 6. Promoting referral of suspects for DST.