IN THE MAGAZINE

LEPERS, MESSIAHS - PART 2

Can You Believe This Disease Still Exists?

BY CONOR CREIGHTON, PHOTOS BY STEVE RYAN


Lalgadh Leprosy Hospital began as a wooden hut on a patch of scrubland infested with scorpions, tarantulas, and cobras, under the funding of a charity called the Nepal Leprosy Trust. Fourteen years later, the scorpions are still there but the hospital’s expanded to house over 150 inpatients, the hospital staff, and all their families. For a compound that treats sufferers of one of the world’s most gruesome diseases, it’s a remarkably positive place—bucolic even, with birds singing in the trees, wild garlic plants spitting out their strong perfume, and buffalo lazing in the long grasses. On clear days, you can climb the watchtower and make out the small white tips of the Himalayas to the north. If it’s extremely clear, you might even convince yourself that you can pick out Everest from the lineup. Staff and their children play soccer in the cool evening on a proper field with goalposts, the patients sit down together to eat huge plates of dahl baht and rice in the canteen, and the only moans in the middle of the night come from randy jackals skirting the perimeter fence. “Tranquil” is the first word to come to mind when you arrive at the hospital. It’s easy to forget that it treats one of the most nightmarish diseases that the vengeful gods have ever bestowed upon us puny mortals. But while it may be pretty from the outside, the hospital’s wards and operating rooms are a wee bit less lovely, what with chicken wire for windows, beds that are more rust than metal, and an X-ray machine so old it’s dangerous for both patient and operator. The doctors perform skin grafts and amputations under single-bulb lamps that give off about as much light as a mobile phone. They have two theaters: the “clean” one and the “dirty” one. The dirty one is where they do amputations.


“Leprosy is worse than AIDS,” says Graeme Cugston, the Australian director of the hospital, “At least with AIDS, after a year or so without treatment, you die. With leprosy you just keep on going. It’s a living hell.” The disease starts to work on the peripheries of the body: toes, fingers, eyelids, and skin. The leprosy bacteria causes an auto-destructive reaction in the body’s immune system, which starts to eat away at itself in an effort to shake the infection. What this effectively leads to is rotting from the outside in. It’s like a literal version of biting off your nose to spite your face. As the disease progresses, the skin desensitizes. This is where the real problems, like Makessor’s feet, begin. If you don’t feel pain, how can you protect yourself?

Bakumari is one of the most critically affected patients at the hospital. She can’t tell you how old she is, but she knows that she was born the same year as the great earthquake of Nepal (which was in 1934). She is a tiny woman with short gray hair and frail limbs that poke out from under her sari like the branches of a blackthorn tree. She has had leprosy for 14 years. “I thought it was a curse of God,” she says. The hospital has been treating her for about five years now, and part of her program involves education about leprosy—teaching her that it’s not a form of divine punishment or karma but a disease that anyone can get. For the time being, Bakumari remains unconvinced. “I know that leprosy is a disease,” she says, “but I still think maybe I was cursed.”



To look at her, it’d be hard to disagree. She has no sensation in her feet or her hands and was left blind after her eyelids disintegrated, allowing infection to attack. Talking to her on the small stone stoop outside her ward, flies land on her nose and eye sockets. She doesn’t feel them. A cobra could slide out of the grass and wrap itself around her feet and she wouldn’t have a clue. Bakumari is a wonderful, intelligent lady who, like all dear grannies, could talk the legs off a table, but physically she is less capable than a two-year-old. The saddest thing for the staff at Lalgadh is that Bakumari’s physical destruction could have been easily prevented.


TO BE CONTINUED
LEPERS, MESSIAHS | 1 | 2 | 3 |

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Comments

	Steve Ryan, on Mar 6, 2009 wrote: More pics on my blog.
Anonymous, on Sep 26, 2008 wrote: wow.... yup and the beat goes on, malaria stills kills more people than nything else in the world and guess what mainly poor people so yeah no funding! yay don’t you just feel great about capitalism... conor you’re a rock star and steve a visual genius hope i see ya in berlin x j
Anonymous, on Sep 21, 2008 wrote: Steve Ryan is an awesome photographer
	Taeil, on Sep 6, 2008 wrote: This is why I still read the magazine.
Anonymous, on Sep 1, 2008 wrote: intense. i need to go scrub.
Anonymous, on Aug 30, 2008 wrote: i like that this has no hint of irony. and the gross toe pictures made me pay attention.
Anonymous, on Aug 29, 2008 wrote: can leprosy get inside your asshole? what a scary thing
Anonymous, on Aug 29, 2008 wrote: Its more commonly called "Hanson’s Disease". Quite a few people in the Marshall Islands have it, and often come to America (Hawaii) to utilize the public school system. Unfortunately, since the Marshall islanders are not required to immunized (or even checked up on) before matriculation, many small children infected with leprosy can contaminate the school. Nice, huh?
Anonymous, on Aug 29, 2008 wrote: Incredible. Way to bring light to an often forgotten disease and it’s impact on human lives. Wonderful piece of journalism.
Anonymous, on Aug 29, 2008 wrote: fucking gross. nothing more to say. well, good story.
Anonymous, on Aug 29, 2008 wrote: I am so pumped you guys have finally realized how interesting the fucked up world of medicine can bestow.
Anonymous, on Aug 29, 2008 wrote: I need to read the rest of this immediately.
Anonymous, on Aug 28, 2008 wrote: this is better than master of puppets.
Anonymous, on Aug 28, 2008 wrote: oh my god oh my god. is this real?