
Our work promotes the inclusion of people affected by leprosy in the work of disability organisations as well as working towards greater inclusion of both persons affected by leprosy and persons with disability in wider society. This has led to high profile successes such as a new law to safeguard the rights and improve the lives of people with disability in Myanmar being passed by the National Parliament.
Inclusive Advisory Service
One of the key services The Leprosy Mission Myanmar offers is the Inclusive Advisory Service (IAS). The IAS allows us to work extensively with mainstream organisations to provide them with training in disability and leprosy inclusion within their operations and services. This training ensures the meaningful inclusion of persons affected by leprosy and persons with disability and is based on our years of experience of working directly with communities and persons affected.
We believe that the IAS approach is the ideal way of ensuring that leprosy and disability remain a focus for organisations across Myanmar’s society. This will ensure persons affected by leprosy and persons with disability will be able to access their rights and everything they need from businesses and government duty-bearers.
The IAS programme operates through a process of referrals and businesses send their staff and volunteers to learn from our teams on the training programmes.
Early Childhood Intervention Scheme
Since 2015, The Leprosy Mission Myanmar has also been implementing the Early Childhood Intervention Scheme so that we can identify disability and potential disability among children during their early development years.
Once we identify a child with disability, we work to ensure that they have the right support they need to manage the disability within the community, so that they can remain included within their communities, living healthy and happy lives.
Disability Resource Centres
We also support a network of Disability Resource Centres across the country. These provide physical rehabilitation through physiotherapy to provide healing, ulcer care, and special education as well as counselling and emotional support.