The Leprosy Mission

The Leprosy Mission International (LMI) is an international and inter-denominational Christianity, Christian medical mission. Their historic priority is the treatment and eradication of Hansen's disease, commonly known as leprosy. Their operational focus is on healthcare delivery, rehabilitation, advocacy, and rights-based approaches in endemic communities.

Areas of operation

The Leprosy Mission works through a Global Fellowship, composed of Members and Affiliates from 28 different countries.

The Global Fellowship came into being in 2011 when The Leprosy Mission Charter was signed. This charter committed all signees to:
* A shared identity, vision, purpose, and values
* Work together in mutual reliance
* Actively add value to the total Fellowship and strengthen its effectiveness
* Work with agreed accountability structures
* Observe financial stewardship principles

The Members of the Global Fellowship are split into countries that implement leprosy work and countries that support leprosy work through fundraising, while some countries do both. The Leprosy Mission's Global Fellowship is supported by an International Office in London, UK. This office operates as a central hub, providing leadership, coordination, facilitation, and operational services.

National Committees are in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Eire, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Northern Ireland, Scotland, South Africa, Spain. The Leprosy Mission also works through partners in Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Activities

Hospitals and healthcare

The Leprosy Mission owns 14 hospitals in TLM India, India, one in Bangladesh, and one in Nepal. These hospitals are centers of excellence that provide care to leprosy patients, as well as meeting the medical needs of the surrounding communities. The hospitals treat ulcers and leprosy reactions, providing counselling, mental health support, and health education. They also provide reconstructive surgery, physiotherapy, assistive devices, and special footwear. In 2022, 1,335 people underwent reconstructive surgery with The Leprosy Mission. There are mobile prosthetic units in Nigeria and Myanmar that provide medical care to those who have lost their limbs. All of this is designed to enable people affected by leprosy to live independent and productive lives.

The Leprosy Mission supports a number of hospitals in Asia and Africa that are owned by the government or local church.  They also support leprosy control activities across many of the countries in which they work. Leprosy is a curable disease and if cases can be diagnosed and treated early enough, the disabilities associated with leprosy can be avoided.

Training and education

Leprosy is found predominantly in countries where poverty is widespread. To help prevent poverty amongst the leprosy community, The Leprosy Mission provides education to people affected by leprosy, offering formal education and literacy classes.

For school-age children, The Leprosy Mission provides support to help them to stay in school and finish their school education. For adults, The Leprosy Mission offers vocational training, which includes, for example, training in mechanics, computers, agriculture, and printing.

The Leprosy Mission runs training sessions to ensure that general health care workers can recognise early symptoms of leprosy, treat it with Multi-Drug Therapy, and reduce the risk that the disease spreads to others.

There is also leprosy awareness training for the communities with leprosy through which the people learn about the early symptoms of leprosy and understand the importance of seeking out free Multi-Drug Therapy.

Community-based rehabilitation

People affected by leprosy are often ostracised by their communities, which prevents them from being able to participate in the economic, social, and political life of the society in which they live.

To tackle this issue, The Leprosy Mission supports community-based rehabilitation programmes across Asia and Africa. This work includes promoting inclusive development, skills training, Microfinance, micro-finance, self-help groups, low-cost housing, self-care groups, and supporting Disabled People's Organisations. The Leprosy Mission also campaigns to end legal discrimination against people affected by leprosy and encourages community support for those affected.

Advocacy

The Leprosy Mission works alongside persons affected by leprosy so that they can advocate for their rights and reduce the physical and social barriers they face. The Mission provides advocacy training for people affected by leprosy so that they can self-advocate. This training ensures that people affected by leprosy know their rights and have the self-confidence to lobby for change at the local and national governmental levels.

The Leprosy Mission has been working with the United Nations to ensure that governments are under pressure to protect the rights of people affected by leprosy. This advocacy is based on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD). At the national level, The Leprosy Mission works with national governments to ensure that leprosy receives the appropriate time, attention, and resources. The Leprosy Mission has also been focused on repealing all laws that explicitly discriminate against people affected by leprosy across the world.

Research

The Leprosy Mission conducts research into leprosy that can help to answer many unanswered questions. This includes work to prevent the spread of leprosy, to prevent and treat leprosy reaction, and to understand why some people encounter severe nerve damage despite good treatment. Around 70% of people affected by leprosy may struggle with mental illness (anxiety or depression), so The Leprosy Mission also works to understand the link between leprosy and inner wellbeing,

The research is conducted in the Mycobacterial Research Laboratory in Anandaban Hospital, Nepal, at the Rural Health Programme, Nilphamari District, Nilphamari, Bangladesh, at the Stanley Browne Laboratory in New Delhi, India, and through TLM’s field projects across Asia and Africa.

Strategy and goals

The Leprosy Mission will continue to reduce the number of new leprosy cases, working toward zero cases by 2035. TLM will further seek ways to understand and reduce leprosy transmission through its extensive research operations. They hope to learn more about giving an early diagnosis, monitoring relapse, and anti-microbial resistance. The Leprosy Mission will also use new technology to support primary and secondary healthcare workers. TLM partners with governments and other leprosy NGOs to conduct active case findings, implement contact tracing alongside the distribution of a post-exposure prophylactic, and raise awareness within targeted communities.

In 2024, Leprosy Mission marked 150 years of fighting leprosy. Its beginning marked by from the time that Wellesley Bailey and his wife Alice began regular meetings in Dublin to tell friends about their experiences of people affected by leprosy in India, and to raise money'.

Bailey, a Christian from Ireland, had been working as a teacher in the Punjab (India), Punjab in India. During this time he had come across a row of huts inhabited by men and women with serious disabilities and physical deformities. His friend Dr Morrison, a leader of the American Presbyterian Mission in Ambala, explained that they were suffering from leprosy.Caring Comes First: The Leprosy Mission story, Cyril Davey, Marshall Pickering, 1987, p22 Bailey was shocked by what he saw. Afterwards he wrote:

I almost shuddered, yet I was at the same time fascinated, and I felt that if there was ever a Christ-like work in the world it was to go amongst these poor sufferers and bring them the consolation of the gospel.

In its early decades, the international mission was funded by thousands of small denomination donations. While individual donations remain key to its finances, the organisation receives substantial funding from government agencies, such as the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office in the UK and Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade in Australia.

History

Leprosy Mission International was founded by a Irish teacher, Wellesley Bailey in 1874. Over time, its missionary-run leprosy asylums emerged as hybrid institutions—healthcare delivery centres shaped by global medical advances—particularly tropical medicine—and religious caregiving models. Religious care was a motivation for Bailey, as he compared the helplessness of the sick with "the way sinners have to come to God and get His blessing". Originally known as the Mission to Lepers in India, the Mission to Lepers had 10 asylums and supported 8 others by 1893; in 1899 it maintained 19 asylums, and aided many others. Largely, the work spread according to the presence of the British Empire, though it would also come to serve in China and Thailand. In 1973, the organization adopted the name Leprosy Mission International, reflecting its broader global focus and partnerships with national branches across Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

1874–1893 – The Baileys travel extensively in India to see the need of people affected by leprosy and to encourage support work and donations.

1891 – Wellesley Bailey visits Mandalay, Burma, to open the first MTL home for leprosy-affected people outside India.

1891 – mission in Hangzhou, in Zhejiang, China, established on Saint Andrew's Day. This later extended to seven centres in Fujian, then in Guangdong. By 1914 this extended further to missions in Shandong. A colony established in Dajin Island, in the South China Sea, was funded by the American Mission to Lepers, who also supported an initiative at Stone Gateway, Yunnan, Yunnan. In 1920 an HQ for the work in China was created in Shanghai. Leprosy Mission began a partnership in 1925, including a building program for medical training facilities, with Shantung Christian College, later known as Cheeloo University.

1910s – The Mission has extended its work throughout India and the Far East and now has 87 programmes in 12 countries, with support offices in eight countries, including the auxiliary which would become Leprosy Mission Australia.^.

1930s – MTL began to develop into a medical mission with the vision to help eradicate leprosy. In 1930 it was working in 100 centres across 15 nations, though most of their work was in India.

1940s – In South India, Paul Brand (physician), Paul Brand pioneers medical research and reconstructive surgery on leprosy deformities in hands and feet.

1940s-50s – The first effective cure for leprosy, Dapsone, is introduced. Over the next 15 years, millions of patients are successfully treated.^: 95

1950s – The Mission's work is extended into Africa.^: 84

1954 – World Leprosy Day is founded by Raoul Follereau, a French writer, to make sure that people everywhere know that leprosy still exists and is completely curable. It is held each year on the last Sunday in January.

1960s – Leprologists work to discover new drugs that are effective against leprosy as many people are discovered to have Dapsone-resistant leprosy.

1965 – The Mission changes its name from 'The Mission to Lepers' to 'The Leprosy Mission' to avoid the negative connotations of the word ‘leper,’ which is now understood to be a derogatory word'^: 100

1970s – TLM begins to extend its work to people's homes and communities, rather than just hospitals and asylums.^: 107

1980 – Vincent Barry and his team win the 1980 UNESCO Science Prize for their discovery of anti-leprosy drug clofazimine, developed with the assistance of The Leprosy Mission.

1981 – World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a new combination drug treatment for leprosy, Leprosy#Treatment, MDT (Multi Drug Therapy). People are cured in as little as six months.

1986 – Leprosy Mission Nigeria established in 1986, to see "Zero Transmission of Leprosy, Zero Disabilities caused by leprosy and Zero Discrimination of persons affected by leprosy and disabilities." By 2022, it was caring for, and training, 50 children of persons affected by leprosy and disabilities.

1990s – As many more people are cured, caring for people with lasting disabilities through social, economic, and physical rehabilitation becomes increasingly important.

2011 – The Leprosy Mission moves away from a centrally-directed regional structure and reformulates as a more decentralised Global Fellowship, the Members of which signed the TLM Charter (see below, under 'Where The Leprosy Mission works').

2017 – An ambitious new goal is set: to see no new cases of leprosy by 2035. This goal was agreed upon by the Members of TLM's Global Fellowship.

2019 – A new global strategy is launched with three priorities: 1) Zero leprosy transmission by 2035; 2) Towards zero leprosy disability; 3) Towards zero leprosy discrimination

2024 – The Leprosy Mission celebrates its 150th anniversary and prepares to launch a new global strategy

References

Sources

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External links

Official website

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leprosy Mission
Affiliated institutions of the National Council of Churches in India
Charities based in London
Christian charities based in the United Kingdom
International medical and health organizations
International organisations based in London
Leprosy organizations
London Borough of Hounslow