The
national training course on leprosy control, the China
¨C Netherlands Leprosy Relief (NLR) project in 2005 was
held in Deqing County, Zhejiang Province from December
23rd to 29th, 2005. A general report of the training
course was concluded as follow:
A total number of 48 formal and 7 informal participants
from 17 provinces including Henan, Anhui, Guangxi, Hunan,
Heilongjiang, Hubei, Hainan, Zhejiang, Guangdong, Jiangsu,
Xinjiang, Jilin, Chongqing, Shaanxi, Tibet, Shandong
and Yunnan registered for the training course on December
23rd. Among the 48 formal participants, twenty nine
(60.4%) were from provincial institutes responsible
for leprosy control. In order to make the training course
successful, PO organized a pre training meeting and
discussed all essential issues with executive director
and experts from NCLC and director and support team
from Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Dermatology.
Opening ceremony of the course was held in the morning
on December 24th. Dr. Jiangping Shen, deputy director
of department of leprosy control, NCLC, introduced to
all participants the director, deputy director, project
officer an experts from NCLC and Zhejiang Province.
Mr. Jing Yang, deputy director of Zhejiang Provincial
Bureau of Health, participated the opening ceremony
and made a welcome speech for the course. Dr. Weiping
You, director general of Zhejiang Provincial Institute
of Dermatology, also made a speech on the introduction
of leprosy control in Zhejiang Province. Prof. Guocheng
Zhang, executive director general of NCLC, first expressed
his appreciation to NLR for their financial support.
Second, he expressed his thanks to Zhejiang Provincial
Bureau of Health and Institute of Dermatology for their
support for the course, at the same time he also expressed
his thanks to all the facilitators and participants
for their kindly cooperation. At last, Dr. Jiangping
Shen, as the chairman of the training course, announced
rules of the training course and brought forward the
outcome of the course which would help the participants
for their daily leprosy work and training capacity when
they were back.
The lecture of training topics were history of leprosy
and leprosy stigma and its health education provided
by Dr. Chen Jiang, diagnosis of leprosy and treatment
of leprosy provided by Prof. Wenzhong Li, skin smear
and pathology of leprosy, leprosy bacteriology and its
research and leprosy reaction diagnosis and management
provided by Dr. Jianping Shen, prevention and management
of leprosy eye diseases provided by Dr. Liangbin Yan,
prevention and treatment of neuritis, management of
foot ulcers, self care of eye-hand-foot provided Prof.
Guocheng Zhang, leprosy surveillance, Piot module, and
training of leprosy trainers provided by Dr. Meiwen
Yu. At the last day, all the participants had a field
visit in Zhejiang Wukang leprosy hospital facilitated
by Dr. Liangbin Yan, Prof. Guocheng Zhang, and Mrs.
Yemei Sun on the topics of prevention of neuritis, self
care of eye-hand-foot and management of comprehensive
ulcers, respectively. All the facilitators were from
NCLC, among whom, five were senior staff. All of them
had experiences on leprosy training. Some participants¡¯
involvement training methods were introduced into the
training course and got the applauses from the participants.
The training materials of the course and supplementary
reading materials were the Handbook of Leprosy Control,
Leprosy and other mycobacterium infections, Briefing
of Leprosy Prevention and Control No. 2, 3 & 4,
How to Diagnosis and Manage Leprosy Reaction, Handbook
of Eye-Hand-Foot Self-Care and WHO Global Strategy for
Further Reducing the Leprosy Burden and Sustaining Leprosy
Control Activities (2006¨C2010). All the training materials
were developed or translated by NCLC and it was the
first time that we used so many training and reading
materials for one training course. Meanwhile, most of
the materials could represent the trend of updated leprosy
control globally.
In order to ensure of the quality of the course, we
used the same paper for pre- and post- test. Although
most of the participants came from institute responsible
for leprosy control, the mark of pre-test was quite
low with an average of 64.0¡À13.2 (the total mark was
100). Among 37 pre-test participants, the lowest mark
was 30 and the highest was 90. Fortunately, the mark
made a dramatic improvement after the training. Among
48 post-test participants, the lowest mark was 75 and
the highest was 98 with an average of 91.1¡À6.0, which
could indicate that the training course was successful
in some way.
But, there are still some limitations such as the limits
of time. Compared with the topic of leprosy control,
six days training was so limited. Some parts could not
be expressed clearly and needed on job training during
field work and other training courses to reinforce them.
Acknowledgements:
First of all, we would like to express our sincerely
appreciation to NLR for their financial support which
made the implementation of training course possible.
Second, we would like to thank director general and
experts of NCLC for their technical support and advices.
Third, we would like to send our thanks to director
and all member of Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Dermatology
for their logistical arrangement. At last, we would
like to express our thanks to all participants for their
cooperation at the training course.
