Covid-19 posed serious challenges for our efforts to support people with leprosy-related disabilities. In normal times, much of this work happens face-to-face in TLM hospitals and in communities. When Covid-19 travel restrictions kept people at home, this kind of support was not possible.
Our teams remained determined to provide care for patients, even throughout the pandemic.
In some countries, such as India, Nigeria, and Myanmar, our teams continued to use mobile clinics that visited patients in their local communities. The services kept clients safe from Covid-19 and from worsening disabilities.
Mobile clinic in Tamil Nadu, India
Mobile clinic in Nigeria
As well as running these mobile clinics, our teams set up phone banks so they could run tele-consultations with people who needed support with leprosy complications or needed to know more about Covid-19. They even provided video conferencing with our medical teams in hospitals, so patients could receive expert advice in the communities.
While Covid-19 limited our work, our teams still provided direct support to thousands of people.
As well as returning our disability services to full capacity after the Covid-19 period, we have two areas where we are looking to improve in the coming years
Leprosy reactions are the primary cause of leprosy-related disabilities. Reactions are the body responding to a build up of leprosy bacteria within the body, which causes an inflammation.
Our teams are looking to improve current treatments for reaction and develop ways of preventing these reactions. This is particularly true of Type 2 Reactions, which are the most severe kind.
In recent years we have grown more and more aware of the serious impact that leprosy can have on a person's mental health. We have listened as persons affected by leprosy have told us that they would like more support on this issue.
In response to this call we have been training our front line staff to be able to provide basic levels of counselling and support and we have been improving our referral pathways that connect people to further support, should they need it. Our teams also contributed to the stigma and mental health guides that were published in 2020.
As well as this, we are conducting more research into leprosy and mental health, which we hope will improve mental health support across the world.