“Leprosy eliminated? … A wake-up call from Liberia ”

Leprosy Mailing List, September 11^th, 2009

Ref.: “Leprosy eliminated? … A wake-up call from Liberia ”
From: Koning Pieter de, Würzburg , Germany

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Dear Salvatore,

Please allow me to respond to Dr. Vijayakumaran’s comments (LML August 27, 2009).

The point I was trying to make is that almost all new cases were detected during “outreach village surveys”, none of the cases were referred. They were of course the result of deficient basic health services elsewhere, but had it not been for the outreach programme, none of the cases would have been found and none would have reached the “referral” hospital. This makes you wonder about the areas the outreach programme never reached, for whatever reason. I agree it is not entirely appropriate to extrapolate to the entire region and that a complete situation analysis is necessary…

My fear is that this analysis, if it ever takes place and is done properly, will come up with figures far more disastrous than my (probably very conservative) calculations.

Kind regards,

Dr. Pieter de Koning, MD, MPH

Medical Advisor

Deutsche Lepra- und Tuberkulosehilfe e.V (DAHW)

Mariannhillstraße 1c, 97074 Würzburg

Telefon: ++49 (0)931 7948-113, Fax: -160

E-mail: pieter.de-koning(at)dahw.de