Effective leprosy control programme may beindicated by all of the following except :

Increasing number of children affected National Leprosy Control Programme was initiated in 1955. In 1983 this was redesignated "National Leprosy Eradication Programme". Goal was to reduce case load to 1 or less than 1 per 10,000 population (elimination target) by 2000. Recently India has achieved the "Leprosy elimination target by 2005" except in some states. These states are Bihar, Jharkhand, Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Evaluation of programme: There are two main types of indicators in leprosy control a)Operational indicators These are related to case-finding, treatment, relapses & disabilities for e.g. Relapse rate - One of the best indicators of the efficacy of drug regimen Case detection ratio - No. of cases registered / no. of cases estimated. Propoion of children among newly detected cases. Propoion of multibacillary cases on regular treatment during the year. Propoion of female cases among newly detected cases. Treatment completion/cure rate. Propoion of new cases presenting with grade 2 disability/impairment at the time of diagnosis. Propoion of treatment defaulters. Propoion of patients who develop new/additional disability during MDT. bjlipidemiological indicators: To assess the impact of the actions taken with regard to the problem reduction. Incidence rate - most sensitive index of transmission of disease. Only index for measuring the effectiveness of the measure taken i.e. reduction of transmission. Prevalence - This provides a measure of case load & is useful in planning of the treatment services. So it is obvious that increasing no. of children affected will indicate ineffective leprosy control. About option'd' High new case detection rate comes under operational indicators which shows that the Leprosy Control Programme is effective in detecting new cases from the already pool of leprosy cases. Thus these new cases could be treated to reduce fuher transmission of disease.