India ’s Health Minister Anbumani Ramdoss claimed that Yaws, a common chronic infectious disease occurring mostly in the warm humid topical regions, has now been eliminated from India but eradication will take another two years. In medical parlance, elimination of a disease can be claimed when there are no reported cases in the past 3 years and eradication is when no incidence of the disease for a period of 5 years.
The disease, mostly prevalent in children within the age group of 6-15, is
mostly found in 49 remote tribal districts of 10 states, but mostly in
Andhra Pradesh,
Orissa,
Chhattisgarh. Yaws generally results in disability and therefore increases the poverty of the tribals. Administration of a single penicillin injection to the infected persons, their family members, neighbors, and school contacts is sufficient to cure this disease.
India started a Yaws Eradication Programme (YEP) in 1996-97 implemented by the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) and first started in Koraput district of Orissa
in 1996-97 and later extended to all endemic districts by 1999. The other
affected states are
Assam ,
Jharkhand,
Gujarat ,
Madhya Pradesh,
Maharashtra
, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh.
All nations agreed to eradicate poverty and combat diseases as part of the
Millennium Development Goals. As a poverty-enhancing disease, Yaws was a major
challenge for India to meet these goals. Recently, India claimed elimination of
leprosy but has faltered on
polio,
has
20% of the world’s tuberculosis patients,
ill prepared to meet
newly found TB strains, and Kala Azar.
Most critically, India has the most
malnourished children in the world.
The silver lining is that India has already implemented a World Bank-funded Rs. 400 crore (USD 86 million) Integrated Disease Surveillance Programme (IDSP) puts into place advanced networking equipment that would help track infectious diseases in even the remotest parts within 5-6 hours.
Journal
of Health
