Just Another Day At The Leprosy Mission

Spent the morning taking portraits of patients at the leprosy mission. Their stories are fascinating and sad. Photographed one man who was a farmer and had been away from his family for 10 months. When I asked him about his future, he was worried about this time gap and whether his family would want him back. Sometimes, leprosy patients are not wanted by their families, because in tight knit rural communities, the family is often alienated as much as the leprosy sufferer. Therefore, either the whole family moves to another community or the person with leporosy is sent away. There are some real success stories in the hospital too. The trick is catch the disease early before there is any sign of deformity. Even slight deformities can be corrected by surgery and I spent the afternoon in "greens" photographing an incredibly complex hand operation. The hand is cut across the palm and the tendon of each finger is tightened or loosened to correct the hand deformity. Badly damaged tendons are fixed by grafting a tendon from a different part of the hand - called a tendon transfer. All this is done with minimal facilities and few staff. A prayer is said before each operation.