Muscat: A total three cases of leprosy disease were detected in the Sultanate of Oman in 2017, according to National Centre for Statistics and Information (NCSI).
Though believed to be extinct, over 200,000 new cases are still diagnosed each year. Around 600 people are diagnosed each day, of which 50 are children, while over 3 million people are living with undiagnosed leprosy.
Over 4 million people are living with a disability caused by leprosy.
Leprosy is a chronic disease caused by a bacillus, Mycobacterium leprae. M. leprae multiplies slowly and the incubation period of the disease, on average, is five years.
In some cases, symptoms may occur within one year but can also take as long as 20 years to occur.
The disease mainly affects the skin, the peripheral nerves, mucosa of the upper respiratory tract and the eyes – with people with the disease finding it hard to close their eyes.
The first sign of leprosy is usually a patch of discoloured skin and if left untreated, leprosy causes loss of sensation, paralysis, ulcers and infections, which can lead to blindness and amputation.
According to WHO report. 210,758 new leprosy cases were detected globally, showing a reduction of over 3,000 compared with the previous year. This is the third year in a row that the number of leprosy cases has stagnated.
In the countries where we work, India reported 127,326 new cases which accounted for 60 per cent of the total, Bangladesh had 3,976 and Mozambique had a total of 1,335 new cases. All three countries are considered as having a “high burden for leprosy.”
Official WHO reports on leprosy for the year 2016 were received from 143 countries from all WHO regions.
The prevalence was registered as 0.23 per 10,000 population with 171,948 leprosy cases on treatment at the end of 2016 – the actual number could be much higher, however. 60% of these were in India.
The elimination of leprosy as public health problem (defined as a registered prevalence of less than 1 case per 10,000 people) was achieved globally in the year 2000.
Prevalence rates have dropped from under 5 million cases in the mid-1980s to under 200,000 cases at the end of 2016.
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