Project description
Protecting those at risk of developing leprosy in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Mozambique
Leprosy is an infectious disease that can cause impairments, making early detection, treatment, and prevention essential to reduce transmission and ensuing complications. Ethiopia, Tanzania, and Mozambique are known as high-endemic areas for leprosy. The World Health Organization recommends single-dose rifampicin post-exposure prophylaxis (SDR-PEP) for contacts of leprosy patients. The EU-funded PEP4LEP 2.0 project aims to identify the most effective integrated approach for screening individuals for leprosy, neglected infectious skin diseases, and common skin diseases to assess eligibility for SDR-PEP administration. The study compares two approaches: a community-based skin camp and a health centre-based screening. It also collects additional data to assess the impact of the pandemic on these interventions, the cost-effectiveness and acceptability of both interventions, and the capacity of health workers.
Objective
BACKGROUND - Leprosy is a significant public health problem. Early detection, treatment, and prevention are crucial to reduce transmission and disabilities. The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends single-dose rifampicin post-exposure prophylaxis (SDR-PEP) for screened contacts of leprosy patients. The PEP4LEP 2.0 study builds upon the EDCTP2-PEP4LEP project to identify the most effective intervention to screen individuals for leprosy, other skin neglected infectious diseases (skinNIDs) and common skin diseases, and to provide SDR-PEP. The study takes place in leprosy high-endemic areas in Ethiopia, Tanzania and Mozambique. It determines which intervention has most effect on leprosy case finding and detection delay. However, the COVID-19 pandemic hampered the initial PEP4LEP study through delayed interventions and medication shortages, affecting the main outcome indicator: case detection delay.
METHODS - PEP4LEP 2.0 is a two-arm, cluster-randomized implementation trial to compare two interventions: 1) a community-based skin camp intervention, screening 100 leprosy patient's community contacts for leprosy and other skin diseases, and administering SDR-PEP; and 2) a health centre-based screening intervention, inviting leprosy patients’ household contacts to health centres for screening and SDR-PEP. To ensure a scientific sound analysis, PEP4LEP 2.0 collects additional data, increasing the sample size by 25%, to understand the pandemic's effects and enable analysis with and without COVID-19 influences. Skin camp organization, skinNID distribution, health staff capacity and acceptability will also be studied. Results will be modelled to assess the long-term impact related to costs.
IMPACT - PEP4LEP 2.0 results will reflect scientific, societal and economic impact towards reduced leprosy transmission. They will be disseminated to all stakeholders: scientists, policymakers, WHO, health staff, affected communities, NGOs and the general public in the EU and Africa.
Fields of science
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical policiescivil societynongovernmental organizations
- medical and health sciencesbasic medicinepharmacology and pharmacypharmaceutical drugs
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencespublic healthepidemiologypandemics
- medical and health scienceshealth sciencesinfectious diseasesRNA virusescoronaviruses
Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.2.1 - Health Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation ActionsCoordinator
1097 DN AMSTERDAM
Netherlands