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Manawatu Standard, Volume LXI, Issue 203, 29 July 1941, Page 6

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PROBLEM OF CURED LEPERS

1 “In tlio past- 25 years the doctors have had so many cures at the JejHir hospitals that it is a very real problem to find out what to do with these people,” said Ilcv. F. A. Thomson, Dominion secretary for the Mission to Lepers, in an address at the weekly gathering yesterday of the Palmerston North Rotary Club. Often, lepers who showed no further signs of infection were refused re-entry to their families, tribes or communities. They had to be cared for, not only because they were outcasts from their former stations but also to prevent a recurrence of the disease. “Leprosy is not the result of evil living—that was an old idea and it is now known that it is nothing of the sort,” said Mr Thomson. “It can be caught by you or by me, normal peoplo in New Zealand, if wo travel in the East and, when in a low state of health, use the same towel as a leper, sleep in a bed used tlio previous' night by a leper, or use any utensil recently handled by a leper. Leprosy is a misfortune; it is not a punishment.” In India it had been estimated by a leading economist, proceeded the speaker, that lour out of live people each night went to sleep hungry. This made for a lowering of resistance to I infection. One problem in dealing with leprosy was the adequate feeding of the people and another was how to teach the backward peoples to live hvgienioally. Leprosy could be cured absolutely, and this had been proved by the fact that 35 years ago there was a colony set up in India of cured lepers. Not one case of leprosy had recurred either among the men or the women, nor had it appeared among their families. Further, the disease was not hereditary; a baby could be born of leper parents and, provided it was weaned at six months and then not touched by the parents, the mission could ensure that it would grow up healthy and normal—and for only £4 a year.

Infection from leprosy was severe and one bad case of leprosy of the skin could infect no fewer than 500 other persons in a .year, the speaker said. Tin’s led to people suffering from it being outcasts and to their not being received into their own communities after they had been cured. Part of the cure of leprosy was physical work, and large farms wore attached to most of the leper hospitals. At Dramptai, in the Central Provinces of India, about 2GOO acres of jungle land had been given to the mission and here 2G families were settled, there being 35 children. Tho men and women (with the exception of 20 per cent, of normal people, who were skilled farmers) were cured lepers, and with 15 acres to each family they were making a living. Tho experiment was proving most successful and it was hoped to extend it. A settlement on similar lines had been established in Tanganyika, in Africa.

Mr Thomson told of numbers of lepers who had been cured, of their gratefulness, of their acceptance of Christianity when they saw Christianity in action in this manner, and of the fact that this cure could bo brought about at the cost of £5 per year for each patient. This could redeem a leper, cure the disease and make a man of him again. So small was the sum that in Dunedin the speaker had met a woman who had supported both a man and a woman for 15 ■ years in an Indian leper hospital—out of only a housemaid’s wages. In the world to-day there were about 3,000,000 lepers, Mr Thomson said. Their distribution was, roughly, 1,000.000 in India, 800,000 in China, 800,000 in Africa and 500,000 in Japan, with others in fair numbers in the Latin States of South America. It was estimated that if the mission bad sufficient funds, and doctors and nurses, and could concentrate on child- j ren and curable cases, leprosy could be stamped out in 75 or 100 years. The thanks of the club were expressed to the speaker by Mr A. A. Langley. Mr J. Emmett was welcomed as a visitor.