Worldcrunch
Egypt is one of the few countries where leprosy persists. But with effective treatment methods and cases declining, some say Cairo wants to close the country’s last leprosy colony, Abu Zaabal, rehouse its patients and transform the land into medical facilities — an idea that concerns patients and their families, many of whom remain in the colony out of fear of social stigmas.
“We all have the same story here. After my family abandoned me, it was these people who adopted me and looked after me for all these years.”
MBALLING — Some 20 people, all officially cured of leprosy, are sitting together at the functional rehabilitation center in Mballing, Senegal. But seeing them calls to mind the ancestral fears linked with this disease: club foots, mere leg or arm stumps, hands without fingers, misshapen faces, washed-out eyes that can no longer be opened. The […]
BUENOS AIRES – Many people think of it as an illness of the past, something you see only in books and historical movies. Wrong: Leprosy is a reality in modern Argentina, and the passage of time has not eradicated the stigma of the disease. Lepers are discriminated against at work and even by their own […]