Ganesh Gautam, leprosy control officer at the DHO, Surkhet has 1.01% of the total leprosy patients in the country. "The growing cases of leprosy in Surkhet is hurting government's ambition to bring down the number of people with the infection to zero," he said.Leprosy is said to be eradicated from a country if the number of people with the infecton is less than 1% of the total population. However, the number of leprosy patients in Surkhet alone is above that mark.
"The government's efforts to eradicate leprosy will not succeed if leprosy rate in Surkhet does not go down," added Gautam.
As per DHO data, there were 13 leprosy patients in Surkhet in the fiscal year 2012/13, with the number rising to 22 in the fiscal year 2013/14. As thirteen new patients have already been discovered in the current fiscal year, the number now stands at 35. The DHO also informed that all the 35 patients are currently under regular medication.
"The main reason behind the rise in leprosy patients is because there are more patients with communicable leprosy than the ones with non-communicable leprosy," said Basanta Man Shrestha, information officer at the DHO. "Twelve out of 13 newly found leprosy patients have communicable leprosy," he informed.
Since the disease can be transmitted through air, controlling it can be very challenging, Shrestha added. "It would have already been transferred to other people before the disease can be identified."
Betan, Ghatgaun, Tatapani, Babiyachaur, Salkot, Birendranagar, Satakhani VDCs are more at risk from the infection.
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