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| Chinwendu Innocent, 30, poses for a photo with one of her three children at the Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre, Nigeria, October 1, 2017. Thomson Reuters Foundation / Adaobi Patricia Nwaubani |
UZUAKOLI, Nigeria, Oct 27 (Thomson Reuters
Foundation) - A fter six years of visiting hospitals and traditional
healers across Nigeria, 23-year-old Chidinma Mmadubuike finally
discovered last year that the baffling sores and lesions dotted across
her body were symptoms of leprosy.
By the time Mmadubuike was diagnosed at the
Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre in southeast Nigeria, her face was deformed and
her husband had driven the young mother out of their home in Lagos and
taken custody of their child.
“He was tired of spending money on trying to find out what was wrong with me,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
One of the oldest known diseases, first mentioned
in written records in 600 BC, leprosy still effects millions of people.
Between 200,000 and 300,000 new leprosy cases have been detected
globally every year since 2005, according to the World Health
Organization (WHO).
In 2016, Nigeria recorded 2,576 new cases, of which
149 were children, ranking third among African countries with the
highest burden of leprosy, after Ethiopia and Democratic Republic of
Congo.
Experts are worried that Nigeria could be facing a
re-emergence of leprosy, at a time when the global health spotlight and
funding focuses on diseases like HIV and malaria.
“The government is no (longer) responding to assist
us. Most of the support we get now is from churches and individuals,”
said Joshua Okpara, project director of the Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre
where Mmadubuike is being treated.
“We have new cases on a regular basis. There are (patients) taking treatment. Some others come, take their drugs and go.”
Established by British missionaries in 1933, the
Uzuakoli Leprosy Centre has a health unit with wards, and accommodation
for those who have been cured but who are unable to return to their
homes because of the stigma surrounding the disease.
At the time, leprosy was considered a high risk
disease, but advances in medicine mean that it is now completely
treatable. If left undiagnosed and untreated, however, it can cause
permanent disability.
The Uzuakoli centre has a run-down air, surrounded
by overgrown bushes; its hospital wards furnished with bare, worn
mattresses. But in the neat residential quarters where the families
live, the green-painting buildings are freshly swept, and children play
about as the women do laundry.
Between 2000 and 2015, the centre resettled most
residents back home, after building flats for each family and helping
them find work, cutting the population from about 900 families to 44.
Many of those who remain - the oldest a man in his
seventies who lost his fingers and toes to the disease - were abandoned
at the centre as children and their families could not be traced.
When leprosy is identified early, it does not lead
to deformities or disabilities, but a lack of awareness of the disease
and its symptoms often makes diagnosis difficult.
Ironically, experts trace the re-emergence of
leprosy to around 1998 when the WHO declared Nigeria had achieved the
global health body’s target of reducing the proportion of leprosy
patients to below one case per 10,000 people.
“So efforts were no longer sustained and people
assumed leprosy would die a natural death,” said Pius Ogbu, operations
manager of The Leprosy Mission Nigeria.
Even experienced doctors sometimes find it
difficult to diagnose leprosy, as many of them are not expecting or
looking out for the disease when presented with cases.
“There is nowhere we didn’t go to find out what was
wrong with me,” said 32-year-old Okechukwu Moses, a resident of the
Uzuakoli centre since finishing his medical treatment in 2016.
Moses’ family were convinced that his symptoms,
blisters on his feet and a loss of feeling due to nerve damage, were
supernatural - that an enemy was targeting their son with witchcraft or
juju.
By the time someone suggested it may be leprosy, Moses’ big toe was already deformed and his feet were devoid of feeling.
While health workers and civil society are trying
to raise awareness, resources and political will are lacking, said Linda
Ugwu of the German Leprosy and TB Relief Association, which provides
support to the Nigerian ministry of health.
“The commitment to leprosy education is very low,” she said.
The number of families living in the Uzuakoli
centre has reduced drastically in recent years, but director Okpara says
the task ahead of him is huge, with a new focus on raising awareness of
leprosy in communities.
Jenny Eli, 70, has lived here with her daughter, Ijeoma, since 1982 when her husband was diagnosed with leprosy.
Neither mother nor daughter was affected by the
disease, but stigma forced them to leave their community. Even after her
husband died in 1990, Eli didn’t feel safe enough to go home.
“All my children grew up here. I can’t go back,” she said.
In parts of Nigeria, myths and superstition, and
the erroneous perception that the disease is highly infectious, leads to
people with leprosy being stigmatised and excluded.
Some former residents of the Uzuakoli centre return
after being resettled, begging to be readmitted. Some have lost their
homes and had their land taken by their relatives, while many struggle
to cope with being shunned in public.
“We’ve been going to communities to create
awareness, meet with community heads, educate them on the disease,
encourage them to relate with victims without fear,” said Okpara, whose
centre has broadcast information about leprosy on radio shows.
Ogbu of The Leprosy Mission said stigma and discrimination around leprosy were a bigger problem than the disease itself.
“To reduce stigma, you need to demystify the
disease. Leprosy is just like any other disease. It is curable and the
treatment is free,” he said.
Thanks to advances in leprosy drugs, there is no need to isolate sufferers, or keep them in centres, health experts say.
“Leprosy centres are not necessary ... sufferers were ostracised because there was no cure,” Ugwu of the GLRA said.
At the centre, Mmadubuike expressed relief upon
learning that her three-year-old would not necessarily catch leprosy
because she had it. She is eager to finish her treatment, and see if she
can reclaim custody of her child from her husband.
"He is now with another woman, but if he sees me
now, he will be surprised at how much my appearance has improved," she
said. "My face looked much worse when I was brought here." (Reporting By
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani, Editing by Kieran Guilbert and Ros Russell;
Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of
Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights,
trafficking, property rights, climate change and resilience. Visit
news.trust.org)
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