Leprosy in Kenya

Leprosy is a communicable disease caused by mycobaterium leprae . It mainly affects the skin and nerves, leading to loss of sensation and numbness, the loss of sensation leads to insensitivity which leads to loss of function or numbness, then to ulcer then disability and deformities.

Deformities caused by Leprosy bacilli in the Late stages

It progresses slowly with an average incubation period of 3-5 years,Leprosy can affect all ages and both sexes.
A leprosy patient is someone who has a skin patch or patches with a definite loss of sensation in early stage and other signs include one or more tender enlarged peripheral nerves; the presence of leprosy bacilli on the slit skin smear at early stage. In late stage, it presents with deformities.


It is important to note that deformities caused by the bacilli in the late stages once treated are irreversible.
In Kenya, Leprosy is still found in a few districts in the following provinces:

  1. Coast
  2. Nyanza
  3. Western
  4. Eastern
  5. Nairobi
Kenya is in the post elimination phase since prevalence is less than 1/10,000 population corresponding to the WHO definition of elimination.However, leprosy has not been eradicated in Kenya. Its likely that many leprosy cases are not detected and that the true incidence is much higher than current, so the true prevalence and incidence is not known. Initiatives have thus been put in place to carry out this exercise, some of the initiativies already developed include: capacity building on health workers, creating awareness by developing IEC materials and provinding footwear to leprosy patients.
Some initiatives have been rolled out e.g. Training of DTLCs in all the districts where leprosy cases are registered.

Since the introduction of Multiple Drug Therapy in 1984, the registered prevalence decreased from 6,558 cases in 1986 to 148 cases by the end of 2009. The sudden drop is because of change in definition of a leprosy case which led to many patients being released from treatment. The number of new leprosy cases detected decreased from 630 in 1986 to 204 in 2009.