ACCRA (dpa) – Seth Agyekum, 76, is an outcast from society.
A cured leper who is one of about 40 inmates at the Weija Cured Leprosy Patients Rehabilitation Centre, just outside the Ghanaian capital Accra, his relatives have abandoned him.“They will not come to visit me. My wife divorced me about 20 years ago,” said Agyekum, who has lived at the centre for 40 years.Another patient, Mallam Mamah, 55, said his wife has also divorced him.Agyekum added that the government gives inmates only 1,200 cedis (17 U.S. cents) per person per day and said, “this is grossly inadequate.”The plight of cured lepers and patients has been an embarrassment to the authorities for several years because of the stigma attached to the disease.There are some 10,000 cured lepers in Ghana and about 2,000 active cases today, according to Irish-born Catholic priest, the Reverend Andrew Campbell, who has championed the cause of lepers.This may show that the prevalence of the disease is not high, but society views its victims with intolerance.“They are treated like third-class citizens and this is terrible,” said Father Campbell, 54, founder of Lepers Aid Committee, which has raised some 60 million cedis in aid of lepers.“These people have rights and have to be taken care of. These people have to be treated with dignity. The notion that once a leper always a leper is not true,” he said.“People are afraid of lepers, even doctors. Send lepers to the hospital and see how they are treated, they are sent to the end of the queue and seen after everybody else.”To him, the old Biblical notion that lepers should be kept well out of town and bells put around them to announce their arrival so that the rest of society avoids them must not hold true today.“Our idea is to get them back into society. We want to get them off the streets so that they can begin to feel independent,” he said. Government makes treatment free and has a policy that they should be integrated into society.“People have to be educated that these people are part of the society and for them to be accepted and made to feel comfortable,” said Father Campbell.Father Campbell and the Leper’s Aid Committee feeds, clothes and houses the lepers at the centre. He also buries them when they die because, he said, they feel they are treated with dignity there and will die in dignity there.“They are happy at the Weija centre,” he said, and criticised those who dump the grandchildren of cured lepers on them.Inmates say they are happy about the work Father Campbell is doing for them. Campbell, who arrived in Ghana in 1971, believes he is only doing his work but the authorities think he deserves praise and honour.On January 6 he was awarded one of Ghana’s highest honours, the Grand Medal (Honorary Division).Lepers in Ghana, especially in Accra, see Father Campbell as their hero, friend and saviour. They wish that society would treat them with dignity. But that may take time.