Help Overturn the Stigma of Leprosy
Reverend Martin Adhikary
31st January, 2021 10:40:59
Today, the last Sunday of this January, organisations all over the world working with and for leprosy affected people observe as the World Leprosy Day. The idea behind this is to raise awareness among people about the age-old stigmatising health hazard known as Leprosy. Leprosy is also known as ‘Hansen’s disease’ after the name of Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen, a Norwegian scientist, who first identified the causative agent of the disease in the year 1973. This is the bacteria named ‘Mycobacterium leprae’ causes this disease.
Leprosy is a progressively infectious disease. Although it is a mildly infectious disease the gestation period can take many years it harms people in multiple ways: physically, mentally, socially and spiritually. In days gone by it was considered a curse, even a divine curse of God. Unless right and timely treatment is received by the affected people leprosy can and it does devastate life. The word ‘Leprosy’ refers not only to a disease but this very term was used until recently and still it continues to do so to describe the person with the same: people refer to the person suffering from this is called ‘leper’, which is rather a derogatory way of describing a human person. So today we prefer to describe the persons concerned as ‘people affected by leprosy’, and not a ‘leper’. Leprosy is such a stigmatising and alienating problem right from the beginning of human history. Anyone having seen the many-times Oscar winning Film Ben Hur would clearly know this. Religious literatures have stories of rulers and monarchs losing their thrones and positions because of leprosy. This stigma continues to prevail among many.