A population based survey to assess the scenario of leprosy in a high endemic block in south Tamilnadu.

The decentralisation of leprosy programmes has been implemented subsequent to the achievement of leprosy elimination in our country. But the annual case detection is still high at certain high endemic areas and deserves special attention.
Alanganallur Block of Madurai District, Tamil Nadu is identified to have high Annual New Case Detection Rate than State and National averages in the year 2012-2013. Hence a population based survey was conducted to detect the unreported new cases at Alanganallur block of Madurai district, Tamil Nadu for the year 2013-2014 and the ANCDR was compared with that of the previous and the subsequent years.
The survey was conducted with the help of trained ASHA. The active surveillance resulted in the increase in the ANCDR during the survey year and also a significant fall in the next year which is an expected phenomenon after any active surveillance. The study threw light on the need for the intensification of IEC activities as well as involvement of grass root workers after adequate training to compensate for the withdrawal of active case detection which has occurred after the decentralisation programmes.