Leprosy in Northern India

Abstract

JALMA (Japan Leprosy Mission for Asia) opened a clinic in Ghatampur, Kanpur District, U. P. State at the beginning of 1966. Besides the clinic work of diagnosis, treatment and education for leprosy patients, we surveyed some neighbouring villages. Here we are reporting the results of the survey of five villages near to Ghatampur clinic.The five villages were Jajpur, Jagannathpur, Ajodhyapur, Sitalpur and Raha. All the villages were within 5km from the clinic. The survey work was done at the end of 1972 for Jajpur and Jagannathpur and at the end of 1973 for the other villages. The work was performed by door to door visiting with the help of some young villagers who were working at the clinic as helpers.Ajodhyapur, Sitalpur and Raha were contiguous with one another and had multiple castes. Jajpur and Jagannathpur were far from these villages; these two were separated each other and had a single caste.The population of the villages was as follows; Jajpur 376, Jagannathpur 408, Ajodhyapur 347, Sitalpur 1, 088 and Raha 1, 312. In Ghatampur Block, the average population of a village was about 1, 000 by the basic data of 1960 census, and it could be said that Jajpur, Jagannathpur and Ajodhyapur were small sized villages. Female population was usually less than male in these villages and it was the general phenomenon in U. P. State including Kanpur District. The population of 0-4 age group was less than that of 5-9 age group in four out of five villages. This seemed due to the effect of family planning propagation and service in rural areas.Totally 59 leprosy patients were living in five villages, and almost all the patients were under treatment at the clinic for several years. Some were newly registered by the survey but they did not want to have the treatment. The prevalence ratio (the number of patients per 1, 000 population) was different from village to village. The highest value was 30.5‰ of Raha and the lowest was 2.4‰ of Jagannathpur. It was an interesting result that the prevalence rate was different in contiguous villages just as in Ajodhyapur 17.2‰, Sitalpur 7.3‰ and Raha 30.5‰. The prevalence rate of each village semed not to be influenced by some socio-econmical conditions; the difference of castes, the size of family or family structure.The prevalence ratio of five villages was 16.7% as a whole and the value was higher than that of U. P. Government report (1-5‰) for the central area of the state including Kanpur District.The male-female ratio of the leprosy patients was 3.2: 1 and that of all U. P. State was 4: 1.Out of 59 cases, 11 were lepromatous (18.6%). The lepromatous ratio for all U. P. State was 14.0-28.9%. All lepromatous cases were male and almost all the cases belonged to 30-49 age group. About 1/4 of leprosy male patients were lepromatous. There were no lepromatous cases below 29 years old both in male and female.There were 535 families in five villages and out of these, 48 families had leprosy cases. Out of these 48 families, 7 were multi-cased families.