Leprosy in Northern India

Abstract

The India centre of JALMA (Japan Leprosy Mission for Asia) was established at Agra in 1965. At the beginning of 1966, it opened one out patient clinic at Ghatampur village near to Kanpur which is one of the famous industrial cities in India. Patients visited the clinic from neighbouring districts and states. Authers attended to the clinic for about eight years continuously and consulted several hundred to over a thousand patients per clinic day.Ghatampur village is situated in the northern part of Ghatampur Block of Ghatampur Tahsil, which has another Block of Patara.For eight years (Jan. of 1966 to Dec. of 1973) 1, 785 patients were registered for treatment who were living in Patara Block. Patara Block is situated between south part of Kanpur suburb and Ghatampur Block. It had 123 villages and 122, 500 population by the basic data for 1961 census of India. Many of the villagers were agricultural labours who worked in the field of a few land owners and some small scaled owners worked also in the lent field. Many villagers did not seem in good economical condition.In the first year of the clinic, in 1966, about one third of the patients were registered from Patara Block. The yearey patient number was decreasing year by year with a little increasing for some years. The percentage of female patients to total cases was increasing yearly, and in 1973 it reached 35%. It seemed difficult for female patients to visit the clinic and it took fairly many years to pull out them from their own home. There must be some old traditions and customs in Indian rural society for female patients to visit the clinic.The estimated population for the Block was about 155, 000 in 1973. The prevalence rate was 11.5‰ and it was lower than that of neighbouring Ghatampur Block in the same year. It was higher than the report of U.P. State Government for Kanpur District. The prevalence rate for male was higher than that for female and the same results were reported from other places of India. The child rate was 12.8% and it was lower than that of Ghatampur Block.From the age distribution of the patients, the highest peak was noticed in the age group of 30-34 for both sexes and totally. The second peak was in 25-29 age group and the third peak was in 40-44 age group. In Patara Block, the age of the patients were rather higher compared to the patients from Ghatampur Block. There was one peak in 10-14 age group and a depression in 15-19 age group as in Ghatampur Block. The rate of male to female was 3.0:1 and in child group the rate was much low. In Patara Block, it might be said some female patients did not visit the clinic.The rate of lepromatous was 11.9% and it was higher than that of Ghatampur Block, and still low compared to the results of many other places of India. The male-female rate in lepromatous cases was 5.4:1 and about 8.5 persons were male out of 10 lepromatous cases. The lepromatous rate was much low in child and it was about 4%. In child group, many cases were belonging to tuberculoid or indeterminate and some of them could get self-healing.The prevalence rate from Patara Block was about a half of that of Ghatampur Block and it may be said that in U.P. State, near in Kanpur District, the prevalence rate will be lower in northern area than in southern area.