Strengthening leprosy control through capacity building of allied health workers: A pre-post design

The main hurdles to achieving early diagnosis and management of leprosy and its complications are lack of community awareness and the challenging social stigma. Healthcare workers play a key role in increasing community awareness and eliminating stigma about leprosy, and it is one of the important responsibilities. The objective of the study is to assess the knowledge of Allied Health Sciences (AHS) students about leprosy before and after the training program and to explore the stigma prevailing in the society about leprosy.

It was a pre- and post-test mixed-method study involving both quantitative and qualitative components. Group discussion was conducted for 74 AHS students (lab technicians and nursing students). A paired t-test was used for pre and post-test analysis. Manual content analysis was done for the statements that emerged during the group discussion.

The mean change in overall score was 0.228, which was significant (t = 7.54, P < 0.01). There was an improvement in the knowledge score after training. The Pearson correlation coefficient between pre-test knowledge score and post-test scores was significant (r = 0.318, P = 0.04). The majority of them stated that leprosy patients will be isolated by the community as stigma remains a main challenge.

Implementation of need-based health education and sensitization programs should be improved, and more emphasis needs to be placed on early case identification of leprosy.