Caring for Lepers

On Wednesday, we visited two Bright Hope Leper Feeding and Treatment Clinics. It certainly was not for one with a weak stomach. First of all, let me describe the disease of leprosy. I always thought it was a disease that makes one break out in sores all over the body which were painful and itchy. It is not like that at all. I learned that it is actually a bacterial infection of the nervous system which causes areas of your skin to go permanently numb. It usually starts in the hands and feet. If you catch the first bit of numbness, apparently you can be treated and don't have to suffer the consequences of full-blown leprosy. However, once it reaches a certain level in your body, you will not be able to get rid of it for the rest of your life.

So, what does a full-blown leprosy case look like? When the hands and feet have no feeling, and yet you are poor and must do manual labor and tons of walking barefoot or in flip flops, you can imagine how many cuts you would get without even realizing. Then these cuts get infected and things like gangrene and staff infections set in. This causes the loss of fingers and toes and eventually arms and legs. And that is exactly what we saw.

Emmanuel and Jessie and other neighboring pastors seek to comfort and treat these outcasts with a love like Jesus. We visited two leper colonies, where the lepers and their families are exiled to live. The people ranged from elderly to babies. The children showed no signs of leprosy, but most adults had deformed feet and hands from the amputations of digits. Once a week a team of local christians spend a full day at each center. They have named their clinics after our mother organization, Bright Hope World, who made the financial side of the clinics possible by partnering with people like you and me. But the true heroes are the local people who do all the work and sacrificially care for the people.

The clinic consists of cleaning and bandaging wounds, passing out pills for the week ahead, feeding them three large healthy meals, and giving the traveling lepers each enough money for transportation to and from the clinic. At one of the clinics, they have quite a few lepers who come from other villages.

It was quite graphic to watch the wounds get treated. Also, like most Indians, the people eat on large flat stainless steel plates with a slab of rice and some kind of meat or veggie sauce ... and they eat with their hands (even the men in suits). Except watching the lepers eat was heartbreaking. The volunteers go around and put the food on their plates and then the leper would mix the food around with his fingerless hand and shovel it into his mouth. I was glad they were getting a good meal, but it was difficult to watch.

This clinic was truly an act of love. This is where Jesus would be hanging out for sure.