[To evaluate the costs of prevention on incidence of cutaneous leishmaniasis due of earthquake in Bam]

ABSTRACT

Cutaneous leishmaniasis [CL] is an endemic disease in district of Bam. It has created considerable concerns by people and health authorities. The objective of this study was to assess the effect of the earthquake and costs of prevention on CL prevalence after earthquake This research is based on a natural intervention, in which the information related to the costs and prevalence of CL were collected and analyzed three years after the earthquake [2006-2008] and then compared with similar data three years before the earthquake [2000-2002] as control group. The earthquake increased the CL prevalence approximately 5.2 fold, although the cost of prevention had no significant effect on control of disease. The average cost of prevention was determined to be two US dollars per capita during the years after the earthquake. It figures up an overall estimation of 600000 US dollars for the three years after the earthquake. Meanwhile the cost of prevention before the earthquake was determined less than 5% comparing to after earthquake. The findings of this cost-analysis showed that the current and conventional methods of CL prevention seem not useful. It could be concluded that current preventive measures such as spraying and impregnated bed nets particularly in natural disasters would have no effect on control of disease. Further researches are needed to find out the best method of prevention of CL disease. At present, it seems that early case-finding and prompt treatment of cases would be a proper method to control anthropometric CL