Global leishmaniasis surveillance, 2017–2018, and first report on 5 additional indicators

Overview

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

There are 4 main forms of the disease: visceral leishmaniasis (VL, also known as kala-azar), post-kala-azar dermal leish-maniasis (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.

In line with resolution WHA60.13 on control of leishmaniasis, WHO developed simple, standardized tools to collect a minimum set of indicators annually from all Member States to raise awareness about the global burden of leishmaniasis and to monitor progress in its control. This update follows one published with data up to 2016.

Of the minimum set of indicators, 6 are publicly available through the Global Health Observatory (GHO):4 (i) status of endemicity of CL; (ii) number of cases of CL reported; (iii) status of endemicity of VL; (iv) number of cases of VL reported; (v) number of imported cases of CL reported; and (vi) number of imported cases of VL reported. Because the origin of cases has been reported only since 2013, indicators (ii) and (iv) did not distinguish cases by origin before that date. 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 6 main indicators reported by Member States to WHO up to 2018, to describe additional indicators of gender and age distribution (for both CL and VL), case fatality rates and co-infection rates with HIV for VL and to describe the PKDL burden