HISTORY AND POLICY OF LOK SEVA SANGAM

                   Lok Seva Sangam (LSS) is a voluntary agency, registered in February 1976 under the Societies Registraion Act and is essentially aimed at leprosy control and at the welfare of leprosy patients in the urban area of Bombay.

            Leprosy control and welfare activities had been started in 1969 at Janata Colony, Mankhurd (now Cheeta Camp) and at Chunabhatti slum where the incidence of leprosy is very high. In 1976, LSS took up the responsibility for leprosy control in "L" Ward (Kurla area) which has a population of 3,00,000. The main aspects of the control programme are: Survey, Education and Treament (SET).

The policy of the organization is based on the consideration that the problem of leprosy is, at present, more a social problem than a medical problem. In medical terms it is an established fact that leprosy is curable. The problem then is to convince people that leprosy is a disease like any other disease and identify patients at the early stages and convince them about the importance of treatment and follow them up in their long

Treatment period.

          The other equally important task is to educate the public to accept the patients and remove the stigma and social ostracism. Hence the approach of LSS is to treat and help the patients within  their  socio-cultural  milieu,  more  than  establishing separate institutions or facilities for them, which would again reinforce social segregation, isolation and apathy. Their effort therefore, is to establish common socio-economic programmes in and around our clinics in different parts of our control area (L ward). Though our aim is to pay special attention to the patients welfare and rehabilitation, we try to put them on a par with the rest of the community, together with the healthy and needy people.

                              Surveys in slums and schools are not only for leprosy but for all skin diseases. The dispensaries are open for every kind of consultations. Preferably they would like that clinics should be held in Community Centres or Municipal Dispensaries or that every dispensary should become a Community Centre in which the first aim is the treatment, education and rehabilitation of leprosy patients, but not in isolation.

            If there is a. K.G., a school, a stitching class, a typewritingclass, an adult education class, etc., the leprosy patient should be treated, educated, and rehabilitated with the others, in his own environment. All the facilities offered to the leprosy patient should be open to the others. Their idea is to establish these community centers in those slum areas in which there is high concentration of leprosy patients. Community organization techniques are applied in order to stimulate local leadership and participation.

           Another aspect of the above approach is to involve the different groups of the community in the control area as supporting groups for the control programme. For this purpose they have already mobilized young and elderly people in Everard Nagar organizing them into a Damian Group.  

The activities of LSS involve the Survey, Education and Treatment ( SET). Besides survey treatment the third focus of their medical activity is education which, they believe, is very important since they want not only to give treatment to the patients but to give knowledge and change the mental attitude of the public. Usually the Health Education Programme comprises a recreational documentary followed by a talk by their Doctor or Paramedical Worker on the early detection and the treatment of leprosy, and a documentary or a series of slides on the problem of leprosy.