Sunday, October 22, 2006 Mercado: Obsolete colonies By Juan L. Mercado Sidebar
THEY are out of sight - and out of mind too. But stigma still keeps a dwindling number of Filipino lepers in increasingly obsolete colonies.
Biblical images of lepers shouting “unclean” blur, for example, World Health Organization (WHO) reports that except for Marshall Islands and Micronesia, leprosy is no longer a public health problem in 35 countries of its Western Pacific Region.
“The prevalence rate decreased by 22 percent over a five year period” WHO notes. “The Philippines, Malaysia, China and Papua New Guinea were countries that most contributed to this reduction.” In 2004, the Philippines reported a total number of 3,080 registered cases.
So, “why it is taking so long to eradicate an illness that’s been stumped out in Europe for decades,” asks Karen Rollins of BBC. “In 2006 people in South America, Asia and Africa are still living with this debilitating illness even though a cure, which is available for free, was found more than 20 years ago.”
About nine out of ten are naturally immune to the leprosy bacteria. Multi-drug therapy is now available. And once a patient begins treatment, they’re no longer infectious. However, stigma causes some to shun reporting. They cut themselves thereby from treatment of what science now says is a curable disease.
A 43-year-old mother of two, Crispiniana Cantunaw of Negros Occidental, dilly-dallied about going in for treatment. “Who will take care of the children?” she agonized - until her 14-year-old daughter Anelita showed symptoms. Treated at Cebu’s Eversley Child Sanitarium, both are recovering “and dream of going home,” the Sacred Heart Chaplaincy newsletter notes.
Jude Francis Alce, 9, exemplified how baseless fear of contamination lead families to abandon patients. “His mother brought Jude to the Sanitarium last January 2006,” writes youth volunteer Jayboy Tenio. “That was the last time he saw his mother. No family member or relatives ever visited him...
“Jude’s father is a jeepney barker (dispatcher), with an average daily income of P100. His mother is a vendor who sells goods in town. She leaves early dawn and arrives late midnight. They have 10 children, including Jude. They can hardly eat three times a day.”
Leprosy disappeared from Europe before new treatments were even available “because people’s living conditions improved,” BBC quotes missionary Julie Lewis who works in Nepal. “If you raised the living conditions of everybody in the world leprosy would automatically disappear.”
Discovered in 1874 by Norwegian physician Dr. G. Armaeur Hansen, the germ mycobacterium leprae has an incubation period of five years. Some call it Hansen’s Disease. Recent studies show it’s probably spread by coughing or sneezing.
And it’s has been clouded by myth. Dr. Francesca Gajete, National Leprosy Control Program coordinator notes some people think it’s caused by a “curse”. In the Ilocos, some claim you contract it from eating squash and chicken. Others claim it’s in the genes. “There is no truth to it,” Dr. Gajete said. Leprosy is not hereditary. And it is curable.”
Error in thinking leprosy spread by skin contact led to creation of leprosaria, on distant islands or remote towns. Molokai in Hawaii was where Father Damien served those afflicted. In Northern Thailand, it is in Ban Noi.
Under the Spanish colonial rule, a section in Santa Cruz of old Manila was set aside for this purpose. In 1898, the new American administration set up eight leprosaria: Iloilo, Cebu, Bicol, Zamboanga, Cotabato, Sulu, Tala and Culion in Palawan.
“Transferring patients to these far-away places added to the mythology that the disease was ‘dangerous’, the BBC report noted. “The health profession certainly did not help early-on because removing these people from society simply reinforced the misconceptions.”
By 1940, Culion had become the world’s largest leper colony with 5,472 patients. Many were children or teenagers. Infants born in Culion were usually removed from parents at six months, so they’d not contract the disease. Many were adopted.
Aside from government staff, lepers were served by St. Paul de Chartes sisters. There have been 57 Jesuits who served in “100 Years of Jesuit Presence in Culion,” Windhover magazines notes. In 1959, the Jesuit chaplain at Culion - Fr. Joaquin Villalonga - won the Magsaysay Award for public service.
As modern drug treatments came on stream, most colonies were closed.
Today, Culion is a bustling town. UP scholars are trying to save “an overwhelmingly complete documentary, photographic, and clinical record of the island’s time as a sanitorium.”
The remaining 897 patients in Tala find land sharks are more dangerous than mycobacterium leprae. Land speculators are trying to grab their homes, now the place has become urbanized;
In Japan the last leprosaria closed in 1996. But some colonies still operate in Eastern Europe and India. The main reason is: these stigmatized former patients “feel safer” in these controlled environments, BBC notes.
“WHO’s desire to eliminate leprosy may eventually be achievable within a few years. But the fight is far from over and the need for “education and awareness continues.”
In this out-of-sight-out-of-mind setting, the huddled kids like Anelita and Jade Francis find that in these obsolete colonies their needs - food, medicine, education and clothing - are partly met by the kindness of private citizens. “An act of kindness will keep you warm for three winters,” the old proverb says.
