The Nepal Leprosy Trust is a Christian charity, based in Richmond, London, that provides services to people affected by leprosy in Nepal. It was founded in 1972 by Eileen Lodge, a British nurse, who had emigrated to Nepal in the 1950s to work with the International Nepal Fellowship. The Nepal office headquarters is in Tutepani, Lalitpur-14. In 1996 it established Lalgadh Leprosy Services Centre, a hospital in Lalgadh, Dhanusa district in the southeast part of the country. The Self Care Training Centre run from the hospital is still a key service for patients who have been damaged by leprosy, as they learn how to live with anaesthetic hands or feet or other problems, without making matters worse. There are many skills that they need to learn, which help prevent further ulcers and damage. Two weeks in the SCTC teaches them the main skills, and also links them with a self-help group local to their home. The community development work at Lalgadh has been a major part of their work since 2000, ever since it was recognised that the key to beating leprosy lies in changing the attitudes of ordinary people living in the community. This work has already improved the lives of many destitute people affected by leprosy, but has also transformed whole communities. The key has been to empower people affected by leprosy to help their communities actively in practical ways. Many of them were marginalised and treated as human debris, not to be included in village life and certainly not useful. The major community development programmes – STEP and RECLAIM – enable them to work together and initiate projects in their own villages for water, sanitation etc. The hospital also has the Village Alive Programme which is working with 6 extremely poor villages in their work area. They are in bad shape, but each has a nucleus of trust in one of their existing self-help groups connected to the village. Their Field Staff work with them to identify problem areas and help them find ways of solving them. These tend to focus on issues such as health, education, sanitation etc. Farmers' groups, women's groups have also been started; the different groups run saving schemes which have enabled group members to start businesses and carry out village projects such as the building of proper toilets. Every year in November the hospital runs a hand surgery camp. A team of doctors from the UK stay for a fortnight and operate all day and every day on needy patients. The NLT Kathmandu office shelters leprosy-affected people, provides them skill-based/capacity-building training, and employs them in its handicraft production project, which produces high-quality handicrafts, especially for the export market. NLT is also a member of World Fair Trade Organization, WFTO-Asia, and Fair Trade Group Nepal. The Headquarters staff are led by Mr. Kamal Shrestha, the CEO of NLT, also provide a range of support services for the various projects of NLT, especially for the hospital in Lalgadh out of which many projects are run. This involves sourcing equipment and supplies in Kathmandu, liaising with the various government departments involved, organising and hosting NLT Executive Board meetings that have to take place periodically, and overseeing funds coming from abroad, ensuring their safe distribution to the various projects. The Lydia Children's Fund is also run from the Kathmandu office. It supports around 90 young people aged from 5 to 18 years old in school. For these children, some of whom have no living parents, the Fund enables them to receive an education which they could not otherwise access. This Head Office also runs a Social Support programmes providing help to about 50 people who are vulnerable due to poverty, age, sickness or disability and who lack any support network. 2015 saw staff from the hospital going into the mountains with supplies to help those that had been made homeless by the earthquake. This work has continued into 2016. It has been realised by the hospital staff that this will be an ongoing business as the mountain areas are hard to access and are many miles away from the capital, Kathmandu. The headquarters in Lalitpur underwent a facelift in 2016 to make room for a local road widening scheme. The building lost several feet from its front.
