Time to define leprosy elimination as zero leprosy transmission?

In 1982, in response to growing evidence of resistance to the antibacterial drug, dapsone, WHO recommended that all patients with leprosy be treated with a short-course combination of three antibacterial drugs, rifampicin, dapsone, and clofazimine.1 This multidrug therapy reduced the number of patients with leprosy being treated from 5·3 million in 1985 to 3·1 million in 1991.2 The reduction in prevalence inspired the World Health Assembly in 1991 to set a target to eliminate leprosy as a public health problem by 2000, defining elimination as a global prevalence rate below one case per 10 000 of the population.