Global leishmaniasis surveillance: 2019–2020, a baseline for the 2030 roadmap

Overview

Leishmaniasis continues to be a major health problem in 4 eco-epidemiological regions of the world: the Americas, East Africa, North Africa and West and South East Asia.

There are 4 main forms of the disease: visceral leishmaniasis (VL, also known as kala-azar), post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL), cutaneous leishmaniasis (CL) and mucocutaneous leishmaniasis. While CL is the most common form of the disease, VL is the most serious and is almost always fatal if untreated.

This update follows those of data up to 2016 and 2018. Six indicators of leishmaniasis are publicly available through the Global Health Observatory (GHO). In addition to the GHO, country profiles with a total of 30 indicators are published, with detailed data received from 43 Member States.

The aims of this report are to update the description of the GHO leishmaniasis indicators reported by Member States to WHO up to 2020, to describe specific indicators of gender and age distribution, relapses, treatment, selected outbreaks, VL case fatality rates, rates of co-infection with HIV for VL and to describe the PKDL burden. This report also contains a brief section on the Kala-azar Elimination Programme in South-East Asia.