Home > Geospatial Application Papers > Health > Planning & Monitoring


Role of GIS in planning and evaluation of leprosy elimination programme


As an illustrative example of the use of GIS technology in health care delivery programmes, we will see how the programme - generated service statistics are being used profitably. Instead of looking at a large set of numbers and trying to make sense of the numbers, depiction of these numbers by the use of maps allows us to get a three dimensional view- time, space and indicators for programme planning, monitoring and evaluation. Simply, to quote the one liner of Yogi Berra, a famous base ball coach in the American sports scene in the recent past, "You can see a lot just by lookin".

Data for Tamil Nadu from the programme statistics:
Service statistics system designed by the programme collects and compiles data on the following indicators, among others, for various time periods and geographic units. In Tamil Nadu's case, the following indicators have been stressed:
  • Prevalence Rate per 10,000 population (PR)
  • New Case Detection Rate (Annual)
  • Multi-bacillary (MB) cases among new cases . (MB cases are considered to have a higher probability of transmitting the disease than the Pausi Bacillary (PB) cases)
  • Single lesion cases among new cases detected. (Single lesion cases reflect the impact of the programme's IEC package on self-assessment of early symptoms of the disease as well as the diligent work of leprosy programme personnel. It is to be noted that the disease is easily treatable in its early stage when usually only a single lesion will appear)
  • Cases of children under 14 years of age (this is denoted as 'child cases' in the jargon of the leprosy programme personnel usually an indicator of the efficiency of the school surveillance system).
  • Grade 2 deformity among new cases, which is an indicator for assessing the case load for rehabilitation programmes such as organization of surgery camps.

Figure 1: Prevalence Rate of Leprosy per 10,000 population in Tamil Nadu, Aug. 2000


For example, Figure 1 presents the prevalence rate of leprosy in the 29 districts in August 2000. It can be seen that the prevalence rate per 10,000 varies from a low of 1 in the Nilgiris to the highest rate of 8.4 in the Namakkal district. Maps have been colour coded in such a way that districts with low levels of prevalence are green -shaded and those with the highest rates are red -shaded. Further insights into the factors determining the prevalence rates can be assessed by preparation of maps for theoretically related indicators appropriately colour coded for examining the visual correlations between prevalence rate and the chosen variables.

In order to grasp the information about the availability and accessibility of health facilities in various districts of Tamil Nadu, location of government hospitals, primary health centers, voluntary reporting centers and other health care agencies including facilities run by non-governmental organizations as depicted in Figure 2.


Figure 2: Location of Health Facilities in Kancheepuram District, Tamil Nadu, Jan. 2000.

Page 2 of 3
| Previous | Next |