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Dedicated to the relief of sufferingIn the Guild’s 125-year history, it has supported more than 100 leprosy centres – clinics, hospitals and care homes – across more than 30 countries, including Bangladesh, Brazil, DR Congo, India, Nigeria, Tanzania and Vietnam. Before a cure for leprosy was found, our main priority was to care for those who were disabled and stigmatised by the disease and forced to live out their painful lives in ‘leper colonies’.
However, there is now a cure for leprosy and as people’s needs have changed so has the Guild’s work. We are now supporting partners who are actively seeking out new cases of leprosy in some of the world’s poorest and most remote communities – from the slums of Mumbai in India, to villages along the Amazon in Brazil. The grants that we award are being used to support leprosy awareness programmes and to train both medics and volunteers to work inside people’s communities. They are actively seeking out new cases of leprosy for diagnosis and treatment, before the disease can be transmitted or cause severe disabilities.
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