[Impact of a profound change in the structure of a society on the evolution of an endemic disease: leprosy in French Polynesia].

In French Polynesia the cases of leprosy are individually severe but the endemy itself always stood in low limits. The intensive use of modern treatments since 1950 have been making the eredication reasonably possible in the future. However the brutal demographic increase, the deep upsetting of the society and the important migrations made propitious conditions in the urbanized area for the advent of a new centre of infection. The result seems to be an increase of leprosy in the territory.