Rehabilitation: Searching for an appropriate strategy for people affected by leprosy

Ref.: Rehabilitation: Searching for an appropriate strategy for people affected by leprosy.
From: Byamungu D., Almarat, Khartoum, Sudan


Dear Noto,

I am bringing back an issue that I feel was not discussed in depth. In August 2007, Dr Pannikar wrote about "Searching for an appropriate strategy for people affected by leprosy (LML August 28th, 2007). There was some positive comments from Wim Brakel, Gopal and Soutar.

My letter is a call for discussion on how wills our future strategy should look like after the time bound of the current one. We need to start exploring in depth the issues that were raised in the letter of Pannikar like mainstreaming leprosy in the development plan which is far beyond mainstreaming it in disability issues that we are currently working on. How to deal effectively with other issues like leprosy in a war situation, stigma and discrimination and leprosy control in area without health facilities and so on.

We will also need to explore the new partnership for achieving a world without leprosy. I think we need to widen our partnership; this is to open what has been "our baby" to others. In Sudan we worked with many donors and partners and I found that they were more effective in certain field than us like UNDP for development project, FAO for food security and livelihood, Unicef for education of children of people affected by leprosy, WFP for food for training and so on.

Based on that I believe that almost every UN body can have some thing to do with the needs of people affected by leprosy. To make it short I will end here in order to allow other people to bring their input.

Best regard,

Denis Byamungu

Former Country Director of The Leprosy Mission Sudan.