Overview

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Overview

West Bengal (WB) stretches from Himalayas in the north to the Bay of Bengal in the south, covering an area of 88,752 square kilometres. It shares border with Sikkim and Bhutan in the north, on the east with Assam and Bangladesh. On the south, it is bounded by the Bay of Bengal and on the west by Orissa, Bihar, Jharkand and Nepal. Northern part of West Bengal comprising the districts Darjeeling & Jalpaiguri falls in the Himalayan range, and rest of the area is plain.

WB has 19 districts, of which district Burdwan is the largest one. Burdwan is home to 7,754,249 people and it is spread over an area of 7,024 sq km. NLR in WB has its office located at Burdwan.

Essential leprosy indicators

Year	Pop (In Mn)	Cases Det (1 Apr- 31 Mar)	Cases (As on 31 Mar)	ANC DR	PR	MB %	Child %	Gr1 %	Gr2 %	Fem %
99-00	77.9	54,934	53,689	N.A.	5.4	38.2	12.7	N.A.	3.3	N.A.
00-01	80.2	35,666	42,466	N.A.	2.8	41.9	12.3	N.A.	3.2	N.A.
01-02	81.5	46,620	22,396	N.A.	4.1	37.7	13.8	N.A.	2.6	N.A.
02-03	82.9	32,243	32,871	39.0	2.6	41.1	12.9	N.A.	2.5	25.9
03-04	84.2	25,025	21,866	29.7	3.1	51.4	11.4	N.A.	2.0	32.8
04-05	85.6	20,891	25,757	24.4	2.1	53.2	11.5	N.A.	2.1	31.6
05-06	87.0	15,755	18,041	20.7	1.2	41.9	6.1	N.A.	1.0	27.2
06-07	88.5	13,593	10,794	15.7	0.9	50.9	10.1	N.A.	3.2	34.8
07-08	89.9	13,551	8,723	15.1	1.0	56.8	8.3	4.4	3.0	35.1
08-09	91.3	11891	8932	13.0	0.98	60.2	8.1	3.4	2.5	30.5
09-10	92.8	11453	8944	12.3	0.96	63.4	7.13	3.2	3.4	30.7

Source: Central Leprosy Division, GOI
Note: N.A. represents that the figures were not calculated by GOI in the relevant years.

ANCDR=Annual New Case Detection Rate per 100,000 population; PR=Prevalence Rate per 10,000 population; MB=Multibacillary; PB= Paucibacillary; Gr 1= Grade 1 Disability (WHO); Gr 2=Grade 2 Disability (WHO)

Analysis of the table
As can be seen in the above table, there has been steady decline in both “Prevalence Rate” and “Annual New Case Detection Rate” since 2002-03. However, there has not been any remarkable change in proportion of “Children”, “MB cases” and “Grade 2 Disability” amongst new cases since 2002-03. There can be seen steady increase in proportion of “Females” amongst new cases.MB is slightly increased in the year 2008-9 & 2009-10. Gr 1 disability cases are being reported regularily since the year 2007-08.

NLR in West Bengal
Netherlands Leprosy Relief – India started its support to NLEP in West Bengal, in the year 2001 by placing District Technical Support Teams (DTSTs) to strengthen GHC system so that they could provide leprosy services under an integrated set up. These DTSTs were withdrawn in March 2007, when MOU between GOI & ILEP agencies in India concluded. After integration to retain a supervisory structure at the district level, District Nucleus (DN) has been formed in every district of the country. This DN consists of one DLO, one MO, one NMS/PMW and one Health Educator/Physiotherapists in high endemic areas depending on the availability. NLR has placed one senior “Leprosy Programme Advisor (LPA)”, who is a medical doctor with training in leprosy and long experience of working in public health activities. This LPA is visiting all three NLR supported districts and transferring his skills, and providing guidance to DN; so that, DN is able to improve quality of leprosy services through supervisory activities and these are provided through GHC staff.

In the following table links are provided to the pages containing information about geography, demography, health system, leprosy epidemiology, activities supported by NLR, GHC staff, their training status, and contact info for all three districts supported by NLR - India.

NLR India is working in two ways:
- By strengthening the leprosy control programme i.e. NLEP
- By providing support to Rehabilitation, which starts from providing support to NLEP in self care and socio-economic rehabilitation; this, however, also involves other organizations and departments. Therefore two different columns/district pages are used (Support & Rehabilitation) as can be seen in the table below. In the column Additional Info, access to key documents could be made.

District (3)	Map	District Profile	Program Support	Reha- bilitation	Additional Info
Burdwan	...more...	...more...	...more...	...more...	...more...
East Medinapur	...more...	...more...	...more...	...more...	...more...
West Medinapur	...more...	...more...	...more...	...more...	...more...

Note: For districts not supported by NLR ...click...

last changed on: 14-02-2011