A non-profit organization composed of five Christian groups was established yesterday with the aim of helping those who suffer from leprosy in China.
"We are doing a beautiful thing," said Father Luis Gutheinz (谷寒松), chairman of the China Leprosy Service (CLS, 中國麻風服務協會).
An Australian national, Gutheinz, with his band of dedicated co-workers, has for decades helped lepers at Taiwan's Lo Sheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院), established in 1930.
"The situation at Losheng is now under control, so we are expanding our mission to China," Gutheinz said.
According to CLS statistics, there are an estimated 320,000 lepers living in around 800 leprosy villages in China.
"Chinese society shuns those suffering from leprosy and their families. They live and die without any assistance," CLS members said.
Children who have contracted leprosy are one of their core concerns. "Who will help them and give them hope?" the group asked.
According to medical research, those most easily infected by the disease are children who have long-term contact with infected parents.
In China, children and infected parents are effectively exiled to remote and isolated villages as a family. They have no choice in the matter, the group said.
Over the past decade, with the combined medical assistance of many countries, some lepers have been treated and the spread of the disease controlled.
But children living in leper villages are often malnourished, and for those lucky enough to escape the disease, the isolation from society takes its toll.
"They don't even know what a school is, let alone have a chance to learn to read and write," CLS members said. "Some of these children have no legal identification. They are invisible, living in humility in the shadow of the disease."
Apart from providing medical aid and livelihood assistance to remote leprosy villages, the organization is also planning literacy projects for some villages, most likely beginning in the Sichuan Province where there are an estimated 40,000 lepers. Of them, 6,000 handicapped, elderly or senile lepers were dwelling in 114 leprosariums at the end of 1998. Only 1,418 had received any medical treatment.
CLS members have visited dozens of leprosy villages in China since 1998. Meigu(美姑), Leibo (雷波) and Dechang Leprosarium (德昌縣痲瘋康復院) are just three of the locations in Sichuan Province the organization has been able to help.
"It was my first time to see so many people crawling on the ground," CLS member Chang Ping-yi (
Chang said Chinese the government only provided some salt and fertilizer once a year to Meigu.
"Their lives of isolation and discrimination resemble our own situation in earlier years," said one Taiwanese leper who has lived at Losheng for 50 years.
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