To Cure and To Care
TLM projects around the world provide a vast range of different services to different people in different circumstances. One of our key values as an organisation is that we always strive to be appropriate in every circumstance. There isn't a "one size fits all" approach. We strive to provide the most appropriate type and level of care and support to everyone.
That variation makes it very difficult to work out just how much it costs to treat each patient. But an average range of services likely to be needed include:
- Hospital Care - Not everybody who is affected by leprosy will need hospital treatment. Increasingly TLM is supporting and enabling local health care providers to diagnose and treat the more straightforward cases of leprosy. But for those with more complicated symptoms or who suffer complications following treatment, a visit to hospital may be inevitable. TLM provides care both through its own hospitals and in partnership with other charities, NGOs and governments to ensure that people affected by leprosy receive the right care.
- Surgery - Our surgeons can do a lot to relieve some of the symptoms of leprosy thereby preventing somebody from developing a serious disability. Or they can correct some disfigurement that has already happened, returning mobility where it has been lost to people just like Baresh and Santosh.
- Eye Care - The eyes of people affected by leprosy are far more prone to injury and even blindness than other people, either through loss of sensation or mobility in and around the eye. From regular sight checks to opthalmic surgery TLM works to ensure that blindness isn't added to the list of difficulties being faced by somebody affected by leprosy.
- Prevention of Disability - Working with people to help prevent them from becoming disabled, or to prevent existing disabilities from becoming worse is one of the key ways that we can limit the impact that leprosy has on someone's life. Teaching people how to avoid or at least manage potentially dangerous activities is a key way of preventing disability. For others the provision of special equipment, tools or shoes could help to make all the difference.
- Education and Training - Santosh's life was turned around through the education and training he received at TLM's Vocational Training Centre at Nashik in India. For people affected by leprosy, their children and grandchildren, education will help them to help themselves out of their poverty and with better employment prospects enable the whole family to live with more security in the future.
- Socio-Economic Rehabilitation - The self-help group in the slums of Kolkata that helped Rani is just one example of the type of socio-economic rehabilitation projects that TLM is involved in. Across Africa and Asia projects like this help people to become confident, independent workers able to support themselves and their families.
On average, to provide this group of services costs just £145 per person. That's just £12 per month or 40p a day! Not exactly a huge figure, but then with one person being diagnosed with leprosy nearly every minute there's still a lot of work to be done.
Could you Cure and Care for somebody affected by leprosy? Click on the Donate Online button and you could change someone's life.
Our thanks to our colleagues at TLM Canada for the analysis behind "To Cure and To Care"
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