Sister Elvira Valentin Martin (丁德貞) has always been compassionate. But since the day the Spanish nun stepped into the then-secluded Happy Life Lo Sheng Sanatorium (樂生療養院) in Sinjhuang, Taipei County 42 years ago, her compassion has deepened and finally she has found her home in Taiwan.
Forty-two years of selfless dedication has won Sister Elvira not only the Medical Dedication Award (醫療奉獻獎) presented by Taiwan's Department of Health yesterday, but her lifelong attention to the bedridden, amputated lepers has also won her unfading love from the outcasts.
"She is our angel," the old leper Yang Ming (楊明) said. "A foreign angel from Spain to take care of us!" the patient chuckled.
Every Wednesday and Sunday, Sister Elvira goes to the sanitarium to help wash and clean the disabled patients. Forty-two years of her uninterrupted service has spread a balm on the lepers' physical and psychological wounds.
"I love them a lot, and I know they love me back in the same way," Sister Elvira smiled.
When people used to turn their back on lepers and fear that the disease could be spread by the glance of a leper or an unseen leper standing upwind of healthy people, Sister Elvira ventured into the realm of the ostracized and helped them to regain hope.
"You look so beautiful," Sister Elvira never forgets to praise the disfigured patients with claw-like hands or a lion-like nose after she finishes clothing them.
Even before the multi-drug antibiotics therapy was widely used to contain what was then a contagious ailment, Sister Elvira washed the patients' body without gloves or a mask. The smell from the leper's skin ulcers -- which drove people away in repugnance -- ? instead steeled Sister Elvira's will to take care of them.
When washing lepers' feet, Sister Elvira will talk away the time with tales or jokes. At Christmas or Lunar New Year, Sister Elvira will give red envelopes and spend the holidays with old lepers who are abandoned by their families. When patients went to Sister Elvira to pour out their pain, she would take them in her arms and pat the crying patients on the back.
Some blind lepers even said that they can "smell" the air of happiness Sister Elvira radiates. The arrival of Sister Elvira has become one of the most joyously anticipated events in the then-segregated leper colony.
When asked whether she feels tired, the 82-year-old nun answered shyly, "not at all, because I love them."
There seven other winners of the Medical Dedication Awards this year include Atayal doctor Jiang Ren-chi (姜仁智) who turned an abandoned police station into a clinic to serve Aboriginal communities in Nantou's Jenai township, which had been ravaged by typhoons and earthquakes.
After ten years in the remote mountainous township, Jiang knew how to rev up his 15-year-old Toyota and dash between Aboriginal villages along a bumpy, rocky mountain road. In a township larger than Chunghwa County, Jiang is the only male doctor. Without ample help or advanced medical equipment, Jiang often sees patients in a makeshift tent in a village.
His experience has told him that health care for Aboriginal people requires a different approach.
"The epidemiological profile in Aboriginal communities is very different from those in urban areas. For instance, tuberculosis is still the number one killer in Aboriginal communities, cutting down life expectancy," Jiang said.
"Suicide, cirrhosis, and accidents are also the leading causes of death in remote villages. They altogether present a special case and the government needs to set up a task force to improve the situation there," Jiang said, who made an impassioned plea for more medical resources for Aboriginal people in a press conference yesterday.
The other six winners of the Medical Dedication Awards are Tseng Wen-bin (曾文賓) for his research on "blackfoot disease" which is caused by arsenic poisoning; Tsai Kong-che (蔡孔雀) for his six decades of service in Peikang, Yunlin County; Sister Hong Jin-luan (洪錦鸞) for her work at St. Joseph's Hospital in Yunlin County; Tsai Hsiu-yi (蔡秀逸) for his service in Budai township in Chiayi County; Tseng Rei-hui (曾瑞慧) for her 10-year-long dedication toward helping children in a medical center ran by Pingtung Christian Hospital on the border between Thailand and Myanmar; and Deng Shui-chao (鄧水造) for six decades of service in Dongshih township in Yunlin County.
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