Background: This work comes back its focus of interest toward Hansen´s disease, a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. The skin and nervous manifestations of the disease present a singular clinical picture.
Objectives: It has as objective to trace clinical-epidemiologycal profile of the patients with Hansen´s disease in south region of Santa Catarina state, in the period from January 1st, 1999 to December 31st, 2003.
Methods: It was performed a descriptive study, of the type retrospective series of cases. The data was collected from the notified cases to the Brazilian Health Minister, through Notification/Investigation Form of Hansen´s disease. The instrument of collection of data was the questionnaire.
Results: It was observed 57 cases of Hansen´s disease with a predominance of white males and aged 40 to 59 years. The majority of the patients was multibacillary with dimorphic or lepromatous forms. The main way of detecting new cases was spontaneous demand.
Conclusions: Hansen´s disease presented a low detection and prevalence rates in the studied region and an irregular distribution of cases. It has been detected by spontaneous demand to the reference outpatient services, and treatment is still centralized. Training actions of healthcare professional of basic attention may improve earlier detection of cases.

Keywords:
1. Leprosy/epidemiology;
2. Leprosy/classification;
3. Leprosy/prevention and control.