Leprosy Post-Exposure Prophylaxis with Single-dose Rifampicin. Health economic aspects in India

The objective of the thesis was to study the health economic aspects of leprosy prevention through post-exposure prophylaxis (PEP) with single-dose rifampicin (SDR). The Leprosy Post-Exposure Prophylaxis program (LPEP) was a multi-centre study, included India where single-dose rifampicin was administered to the contacts of the leprosy patients. We found that SDR is feasible to implement along with the national leprosy control programme. SDR is cost-effective with an incremental cost of US$ 443 per DALY averted over 25 years. We recommend to scale-up SDR in India.