RAIPUR: While India celebrated the elimination of leprosy as a public health milestone nearly two decades ago, a silent, raging health crisis is unfolding in the heart of the country. Chhattisgarh is battling one of the highest rates of leprosy spread in India.
Yet, behind the state’s alarming statistical peak lies a grimmer reality: around 1,800 newly infected leprosy patients, who remained completely untraced and undiagnosed without treatment for the last couple of years, were detected recently.
“The revelation came to light following a first-of-its-kind survey ordered by the Chhattisgarh State Human Rights Commission (SHRC), which expressed grave concern over the plight of patients battling not just a medically curable disease, but a suffocating wall of social stigma amplified in the post-COVID-19 era,” said Girdhari Nayak, Commission Chairman, who shared the data with the publication.
Chhattisgarh continues to report cases of leprosy, a communicable bacterial infection that, while not aggressively contagious, can lead to severe nerve damage and physical disabilities if left untreated. So, the SHRC stepped in since the disease remains curable.
This major public health intervention framing access to medical care involved proactive screening drives across rural Chhattisgarh that led to the detection of approximately 1,800 new leprosy cases, enabling early medical treatment and curbing transmission.
"Good health is a part of human rights," said Girdhari Nayak, Chairman of the Commission.
"The Commission had meetings with CMHOs in late 2024 asking them to get in touch with those vulnerable to leprosy disease, as they need to be protected.”
Consequently, under the targeted health outreach, medical teams carried out extensive house-to-house screenings of family members and immediate neighbours of diagnosed leprosy patients across various villages. The objective was to identify secondary infections.
Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand Odisha, Madhya Pradesh account for 50% of India's leprosy patients
During this targeted contact-tracing and screening exercise, health personnel identified around 1,800 previously undetected cases, bringing them under timely medical supervision to halt disease progression.
According to official records made available to the Commission, there are currently 5,366 registered leprosy patients across the state, with the capital city of Raipur recording a staggering high of 625 cases.
However, the invisible number of 1,800 untraced individuals—suffering in silence, enduring excruciating physical pain, and living stressful, challenging lives without medical intervention—has triggered concerns among the rights watchdog.
Aradhana Patnaik, Additional Secretary and Mission Director National Health Mission, Government of India, during her visit to Raipur in June this year, highlighted that India attained elimination of the burden of leprosy as a public health problem at the national level in 2005.
She informed that five high-priority states— Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Madhya Pradesh—together account for nearly 50 percent of India's leprosy burden.
She noted that these states also have a substantial number of districts reporting prevalence rates above one case per 10,000 population, including 23 districts in Chhattisgarh, 21 in Jharkhand, 18 each in Maharashtra and Odisha, and 10 districts in Madhya Pradesh.
Chairman Girdhari Nayak strongly emphasised the immediate need for periodic, aggressive Leprosy case detection campaigns across all endemic zones and remote villages.
For the 1,800-plus souls lost in the bureaucratic and medical cracks, every delayed day risked permanent disability, deepening ostracisation, and continued transmission of a disease that science conquered decades ago, but governance in Chhattisgarh is still struggling to catch up.
