Editorial: Leprosy elimination strategy

Leprosy still remains an important health problem in about 80 countries of Asia, Africa and Latin America. An important epidemiological factor is that leprosy is very disproportionately distributed: 80% of the problem being limited to only five countries and 92% to just 25 countries. The World Health Organization-recommended standard multidrug therapy (MDT) against leprosy was introduced in the 1980s and has since been extremely effective against the disease. The number of registered cases worldwide fell from 5.4 million in 1985 to 1.7 million in 1994, the global cumulative MDT coverage of registered patients was at 89%, and the cumulative relapse rates have been low at around 1%. Experiences based on many thousands of patients treated with MDT over the past decade indicate extremely low relapse rates (cumulative relapse rates around 1%)