Lay summary
Kiribati is an Island country in the central Pacific Ocean which has one of the highest rates of leprosy in the world. For over two decades, the Ministry of Health and Medical Services (MH&MS) has collaborated with the Pacific Leprosy Foundation (PLF) to support the National Leprosy Program’s (NLP) leprosy control work in Kiribati. More recently a largescale collaborative research project has been commenced which aims to screen the entire population (~60,000) of South Tarawa for both leprosy and tuberculosis.
The aim of our proposed research is to enhance the effectiveness and safety of leprosy control in Kiribati through expansion and analysis of clinical, molecular and programmatic surveillance data as well as prevalence surveys of dapsone hypersensitivity genotypes and baseline resistance to first line antimicrobials used in the treatment of leprosy.