The National Leprosy Eradication Programme under the Health Ministry and
the Lam Dong provincial People’s Committee on Sept. 25 organised a
conference aiming to accelerate efforts to eradicate leprosy.
According to the programme’s management board, in 2000, the World
Health Organisation (WHO) recognised Vietnam ’s success in
eliminating leprosy, bringing the incidence of the disease to under 1
per 10,000 on the national scale.
Since 2002,
Vietnam has launched campaigns to erase the disease in accordance with
the country’s standards. As a result, in 2010, 42 cities and provinces
nationwide fulfilled the targets of bringing the prevalence rate of
leprosy to under 0.2 percent per 10,000 people, the annual detection
rate of new cases at under 1 per 100,000 for three consecutive years,
the rate of disability among newly-discovered patients at under 15
percent, and having 100 percent of randomly-surveyed medical workers and
local officials understand the basics of leprosy.
However, 21 remaining cities and provinces, mostly in central, Central
Highlands and southern regions, are struggling with leprosy with over
1,000 cases discovered each year.
Delegates at the
event proposed a wide range of solutions to eliminate the disease by
2015, focusing on epidemiological monitoring, information work to raise
people’s awareness of the epidemic in remote and far-lung areas, and the
combination of treatment methods. /.
