4 new leprosy cases in one family of 5 house holds

Leprosy Mailing List, July 8th, 2009
Ref.: 4 new leprosy cases in one family of 5 house holds
From: Bhatki W. S., Mumbai, India

Dear Dr Noto,


Greetings from Mumbai, India. I have received three brief comments to my message (Bhatki W. S. LML July 3rd , 2009). They were from Prof. P K Das, Dr A Mondjo and from yourself. Thank you very much for these. I express my sincere thanks particularly to Prof. Das for taking interest in my recent experience on contact examination. You are requested to kindly communicate my response as follows through the LML.

The leprosy cases (i.e. 4 new cases in one family of 5 house holds) mentioned in the manuscript referred above have not been published any where. The cases, however, had been registered for MDT and included as new cases in the monthly report of the respective month submitted to the Asstt. Director of Health Services, Leprosy (Mumbai), the local Government authority for leprosy.

There was a time when leprosy was highly prevalent, we used to get families with multiple cases particularly in slums. However, now when the leprosy prevalence is drastically reduced to a level of elimination, the incidence of multiple cases in one family is very rare.

The intention of my communication on contact examination was mainly to sensitize and motivate all those who are working in the leprosy programme for undertaking proper contact examination if there are multiple child cases in the family. If this is added with simple smear examination, there are chances that the source case, if any, among adult house holds could be detected significantly early.

I do not think that there will be adequate number of families with multiple cases to take up any research project involving PGL-1 or other serological studies. I will be happy to meet Prof. Das in person when he will visit Mumbai and discuss with him the related issues. I will certainly communicate his regards to Dr Ganapathi.

Thanks and regards.

Dr W S Bhatki

Maharshtra Lokahita Seva Mandal,
Mumbai, India