Kala Azar was a public health problem in India till recently. In 2023, the disease is close to the elimination target set up by the World Health Organisation. As per the WHO target, there should be less than one case per 10,000 population at block level. In this second podcast in a series on Kala Azar, Suno India’s Menaka Rao reports on the key contributions of various stakeholders and policies. She spoke to Dr Shyam Sundar, who runs the Kala Azar Medical Research Centre, in Muzaffarpur, Dr Krishna Pandey, Director of Rajendra Memorial Research Institute of Medical Sciences in Patna, and Rakesh Kumar, Bihar state in-charge for Kala Azar. 

Reporting for this story was supported by the MSF-DNDi Grant on Neglected Tropical Diseases as part of the Without Borders Media Fellowship. The fellowship encourages independent, impartial and neutral reporting on health and humanitarian crises. 

References

Kala-azar in India – progress and challenges towards its elimination as a public health problem
History of Kala-Azar in India - PMC
Miltefosine in the treatment of leishmaniasis: Clinical evidence for informed clinical risk management
Elimination programme for kala-azar in India and Bihar during the last century - ignoring the obvious.
An E-mail interview with Prof. Shyam Sundar - PMC
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa021556
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejmoa0903627
Safety and efficacy of short course combination regimens with AmBisome, miltefosine and paromomycin for the treatment of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in Bangladesh - PMC
https://scroll.in/pulse/819854/india-has-been-talking-about-defeating-kala-azar-since-1947-and-now-has-a-good-chance-of-doing-so