Global leishmaniasis surveillance: 2021, assessing the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic

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.

This global report on leishmaniasis surveillance updates those published in 2016, 2018 and 2021. Six indicators of leishmaniasis are publicly available through the Global Health Observatory (GHO). In addition, country profiles of up to 30 indicators are published, with detailed data received from 45 Member States.

The aims of this report are to update the results of the GHO leishmaniasis indicators reported by Member States to WHO up to 2021, to describe specific indicators of gender and age distribution, relapses, the AmBisome® donation programme, selected outbreaks, case fatality rates for visceral leishmaniasis (VL, also known as kala-azar), rates of co-infection with HIV and VL and the burden of post-kala-azar dermal leishmaniasis (PKDL). This report also describes the Kala-azar Elimination Programme in South-East Asia and adverse events after administration of antileishmanial drugs.