Date:31/01/2008 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2008/01/31/stories/2008013156320900.htm

Andhra Pradesh

Sasakawa India Leprosy Foundation to set up centre in AP

HYDERABAD: The Tokyo-based Nippon Foundation has established ‘Sasakawa India Leprosy Foundation’ with a 10 million $ US corpus fund to free the country of leprosy and ensure that the treated patients lead a dignified life. Set up in October last year, the foundation will launch its activities in March 2008.

Yohei Sasakawa, chairman of the Nippon Foundation, and WHO goodwill ambassador for the elimination of leprosy, told The Hindu on the sidelines of the six-day 17th International Leprosy Conference, which began here on Wednesday, that he had dedicated the rest of his life to the welfare of leprosy patients.

The Sasakawa India Foundation would set up at least four centres initially in the country, including Andhra Pradesh, for launching projects with the objective of rehabilitating the cured patients, ‘which is difficult because people in society does not easily accept such persons amid their midst. We want to free them from the stigma of social discrimination’.

He described the activities to be taken by the foundation as two wheels of a motorcycle—one concentrating on the treatment aspect and the other on removing societal stigma to which the patients are subjected by offering them quality education and creating employment avaneues, including self-employment. The activities taken up so far included undertaking a survey of over 700 self-settled colonies of leprosy patients across the country, mostly in the North.

‘I want to ride the motorcycle as quickly as possible while ensuring that both the wheels move smoothly’, Mr. Sasakawa, dressed in white kurta and pyjama, quipped.