Active surveillance of Hansen's Disease (leprosy): importance for case finding among extra-domiciliary contacts.

Hansen's disease (leprosy) remains an important health problem in Brazil, where 34,894 new cases were diagnosed in 2010, corresponding to 15.3% of the world's new cases detected in that year. The purpose of this study was to use home visits as a tool for surveillance of Hansen's disease in a hyperendemic area in Brazil.

Geographic information systems and applied spatial statistics are efficient tools to study Hansen's disease (leprosy) and to determine areas of greater risk of disease.

Applied Spatial Statistics used in conjunction with geographic information systems (GIS) provide an efficient tool for the surveillance of diseases. Here, using these tools we analyzed the spatial distribution of Hansen's disease in an endemic area in Brazil. A sample of 808 selected from a universe of 1,293 cases was geocoded in Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.

The use of Geographical Information System (GIS) to improve active leprosy case finding campaigns in the municipality of Mossoró, Rio Grande do Norte State, Brazil.

There is a high incidence of leprosy in the municipality of Mossor6, Rio Grande do Norte state, where the detection coefficient has risen from 2.78/10,000 population in 1998 to 5.14 in 2004.