Report of the national leprosy elimination campaign (NLEC) of Bangladesh, 1999.

A national leprosy elimination campaign (NLEC) was implemented country-wide in all the 64 districts of Bangladesh for 6 days from 7 to 12 February 1999. The campaign was jointly funded by the Government of Bangladesh (GOB)/World Bank (US$250,000) and the remaining US$381,000 was provided by other international non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A total of 44,400 health workers and community volunteers were directly involved in the campaign. In all, 60,878 suspected leprosy cases were identified during the campaign, of whom 31,433 were examined and 2435 were confirmed as leprosy cases. The remaining suspects are expected to be examined within the next 2 months. Details of the new cases detected are given in Table 8. The impact of NLEC has been significant, the number of cases detected during NLEC being 20% of the annual case detection in 1998. About 52% of the total population were directly contacted through a rapid house-to-house survey and over 90% of the population was targeted through extensive use of electronic/print media and various information, education and communication (IEC) activities.