Evaluation of the elimination of leprosy in Burkina Faso

During May and June 1997, we conducted a rapid survey on leprosy prevalence in 30 villages. It was to assess reaching of the leprosy elimination threshold (one case per 10,000 inhabitants) in Burkina Faso. We drew lots for the villages in ten provinces among which five had the highest prevalence rates of leprosy in 1996 and five had the lowest prevalence rates. We added a leprosy elimination monitoring to the survey. This monitoring consisted of visits to the health centers covering the 30 villages. We interviewed and clinically examined 33 cases of leprosy in treatment in those health centers. We found fifty-one patients of leprosy in visited villages. The prevalence rate of leprosy (6.74 per 10,000 inhabitants) was twice higher than the prevalence rate registered in the same villages. We detected 28 new cases of leprosy during the survey. Proportion of hidden cases of leprosy were 54.9%. We estimated geographical coverage of MDT at 75% in the 10 provinces. Eight of the 27 visited health centers (29.6%) did not get sufficient supply. The cure rate has fallen from 93 to 73 per cent between 1992 and 1997. Our results show that leprosy elimination threshold is not reached in Burkina Faso. Leprosy control activities that were declining during the last five years need to be reinforced.