by Yohei Sasakawa, WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination,
and president of The Nippon Foundation

This article originally appeared on page 17 of the January 31,
2005 issue of The Japan Times

There is a disease which is completely curable. It is phenomenally
hard to contract. If caught early, it has little to no effect on
those who have been touched by it. Yet, mention of this disease
fills people with more dread, with more gut-level loathing, than
any other. The disease is leprosy. It is a condition that destroys
lives.

I have been working on the frontlines of the leprosy-elimination
battle for 30 years now, and in that time I have seen it
transformed from a frightening mystery to a mild condition less
threatening than the common cold. What has not changed in that
time is the degradation that our societies continue to heap on
those affected by the disease.

A number of years ago, I visited an Indonesian leprosarium to
examine the condition under which its residents lived. While
there, I met an 85-year-old woman who had been living at the
facility since she was 12. This woman was healthy and sprightly.
This confused me, so I asked her, "You've been healed for a long
time now; why don't you go home?" Her cheer suddenly evaporated
and she said, "Because that would do nothing but bring trouble and
unhappiness to my family." She told me that she had no choice but
to die, cut off from family, at the sanitarium.

For thousands of years, this kind of isolation in both life and in
death, has been the shape that reality has taken for those with
the disease. They have been cast out of their families, severed
from society. They have been driven out to the wild places of the
world: to inaccessible islands or remote mountaintops. There, they
have had to live out an isolated existence. There, they have died
alone.

Throughout history and in all societies, leprosy has been loathed
as a heavenly punishment. Those with the disease have been
degraded and treated as things that should not exist in society.