When Ali Saga visited a clinic in Jakarta four decades ago, he watched as patients and health workers scrambled to get away from him.
“The doctor suddenly shouted at the patients: ‘Stand back, this person is a leper,’” the 57-year-old said, recalling one of the most devastating moments after his diagnosis in the 1970s.
“They also roughly used a syringe to test my skin and I cried. My skin might not feel anything, but my soul was hurt,” the former leprosy patient added, choking back tears.
Photo: AFP
Now he is using his pain to help other residents of a village on the outskirts of the Indonesian capital live a normal life after leprosy with hand-crafted prosthetic limbs.
After Brazil and India, Indonesia has the world’s third-highest cases of leprosy — a contagious bacterial disease transmitted by prolonged close contact with untreated cases.
Ahead of World Leprosy Day yesterday, the Indonesian Ministry of Health said the country still has more than 15,000 active cases, with more than 11,000 new cases recorded last year.
The ancient disease, which causes disabilities and loss of feeling in reddish skin patches, is diagnosed with a skin biopsy and easily treated with multidrug therapy.
However, Saga and other residents of Sitanala village — where hundreds of former leprosy patients have relocated to find solace — have been treated as outcasts for years and dubbed a “leper colony” by local media.
They are heavily stigmatized by pervasive perceptions around leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, with some Indonesians believing the affliction is a curse sent by God that can be passed on by brief contact.
However, in a small, dusty workshop surrounded by fake body parts hung on white walls, Saga is chipping away at that social cold shoulder, sculpting artificial limbs that have been improving residents’ lives since 2005.
One of the neighbors to receive Saga’s creations is 70-year-old tailor Cun San, who had a leg amputated in his teens and lost another in 2007.
“I once thought I would never be able to walk again ... but now I am so grateful I can walk normally,” San said.
Nearly 500 people who had leprosy now live in Sitanala, because it was located behind a hospital that for decades served as the rehabilitation center for patients across Indonesia. The hospital made headlines in 1989 when Princess Diana visited and was photographed shaking hands with a leprosy patient, challenging the stigma against the marginalized group.
Today, many in the village cannot find formal jobs because of their disabilities and instead have taken on roles as street sweepers or rickshaw drivers.
Jamingun, a 60-year-old driver, lost his leg when he was a teenager. For years he wore a fake bamboo stump because he could not afford a prosthetic limb.
“It was painful and I still had to use a walking stick to steady myself when I walked,” said Jamingun, who like many Indonesians goes by one name.
However, his life changed after receiving a prosthetic leg for free that Saga had made through a charity.
“It feels so different, because now I actually have a sole, it feels like a real foot,” he told reporters. “And I’m no longer in pain when I walk.”
Saga finds it difficult to talk about his past, preferring to focus on his part in helping others build their future.
A limb can cost as much as 10 million rupiah (US$667), but he gives away prosthetic legs for free, or accepts lower sums, for those who cannot afford the price.
He said he has made more than 5,000 prosthetic legs for people across Indonesia.
Malaysia yesterday installed a motorcycle-riding billionaire sultan as its new king in lavish ceremonies for a post seen as a ballast in times of political crises. The coronation ceremony for Malaysia’s King Sultan Ibrahim, 65, at the National Palace in Kuala Lumpur followed his oath-taking in January as the country’s 17th monarch. Malaysia is a constitutional monarchy, with a unique arrangement that sees the throne change hands every five years between the rulers of nine Malaysian states headed by centuries-old Islamic royalty. While chiefly ceremonial, the position of king has in the past few years played an increasingly important role. Royal intervention was
X-37B COMPARISON: China’s spaceplane is most likely testing technology, much like US’ vehicle, said Victoria Samson, an official at the Secure World Foundation China’s shadowy, uncrewed reusable spacecraft, which launches atop a rocket booster and lands at a secretive military airfield, is most likely testing technology, but could also be used for manipulating or retrieving satellites, experts said. The spacecraft, on its third mission, was last month observed releasing an object, moving several kilometers away and then maneuvering back to within a few hundred meters of it. “It’s obvious that it has a military application, including, for example, closely inspecting objects of the enemy or disabling them, but it also has non-military applications,” said Marco Langbroek, a lecturer in optical space situational awareness at Delft
The Philippine Air Force must ramp up pilot training if it is to buy 20 or more multirole fighter jets as it modernizes and expands joint operations with its navy, a commander said yesterday. A day earlier US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said that the US “will do what is necessary” to see that the Philippines is able to resupply a ship on the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) that Manila uses to reinforce its claims to the atoll. Sullivan said the US would prefer that the Philippines conducts the resupplies of the small crew on the warship Sierra Madre,
AIRLINES RECOVERING: Two-thirds of the flights canceled on Saturday due to the faulty CrowdStrike update that hit 8.5 million devices worldwide occurred in the US As the world continues to recover from massive business and travel disruptions caused by a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, malicious actors are trying to exploit the situation for their own gain. Government cybersecurity agencies across the globe and CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz are warning businesses and individuals around the world about new phishing schemes that involve malicious actors posing as CrowdStrike employees or other tech specialists offering to assist those recovering from the outage. “We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this,” Kurtz said in a statement. “I encourage everyone to remain vigilant