Five nation-wide Modified Leprosy Elimination Campaigns (MLEC) have been conducted from 1998 to 2003, to create mass community awareness about leprosy and to undertake a leprosy case detection drive with prompt MDT, during which more than 9.90 lakh leprosy cases were detected and treated with MDT.
The National Health Policy, 2002 had set the goal of elimination of leprosy (i.e., to reduce the number of cases to < 1/10,000 population) by the year 2005. India has achieved this goal of elimination of leprosy as a public health problem at the national level in the month of December 2005, when the recorded Prevalence Rate (PR) in the country was 0.95/10,000 population. By March 2007, the prevalence rate of leprosy in the country had declined to 0.72 per 10,000 population and 28 states/UTs have achieved the goal of leprosy elimination. The remaining 7 States/UTs viz. Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand ,West Bengal, Chandigarh, D&N Haveli and Delhi are having PR of >1 per 10,000 population and are progressing towards elimination. Out of 611 districts, 487 (79.71%) districts have achieved the elimination status. As a result of intensive IEC activities, public awareness about the disease and its curability has increased significantly and the stigma and discrimination against leprosy affected persons has declined appreciably. Concerted community mobilization is still required to reduce it further.The programme will continue the efforts to achieve elimination of leprosy in the remaining states and districts through existing MDT services, capacity building of health service staff and strengthening of monitoring and supervision of the programme. The focus will also be on an enhancing Disability Prevention and Medical Rehabilitation (DPMR) services by involving more Medical Colleges and PMR Institutions and Inter-sectoral collaboration for rehabilitation of leprosy disabled persons.
