They were dumped there and no one came back for them. Some of them have been waiting for decades, others have found solace in the vagaries of their own minds. They are the leprosy patients of Ibn Sina Hospital, patients who have reportedly recovered from the disease, but still suffer from its physical and psychological after-effects. Many are scarred, many have had limbs amputated. Others hold lengthy, unintelligible conversations with themselves, or perhaps some imaginary companion. M.Q. is one such case. Ostensibly no different from anyone else on the ward, he frequently steals away from all company to sleep, or busily chat away to himself. Admitted to the hospital by his family in 1997, he has since then had not a single visitor. M.G. has been here slightly longer, having been admitted in 1996 at the age of 58. Now suffering from the relatively minor woes of high blood pressure and a “tendency to seclusion,” the septuagenarian from Jibal Al-Hashr remains in the place where his family left him all those years ago, never to return. His story is no different from that of 75-year-old M.S.F, who now refuses to wash or change his clothes despite the efforts of hospital staff. He, too, last saw his family the day they brought him to the hospital. A.A, a 58-year-old poetry lover from Al-Otaibiah in Makkah, is one such case, suffering from a psychological disorder. He wants to move to Sh'har Hospital in Taif. “Am a great Wihda fan”, he says, in English, of his favorite football team. A 70-year-old man who used to work as an assistant of a chef in a restaurant became secluded after he recovered. He suffers from deep scars in the face. Dr. Mohammad Saleh Habbashi, the hospital director, says that most leprosy patients have recovered but their families refuse to return for them, leaving it to the doctors and nurses to give them round-the-clock care and attention. The situation, Habbashi says, is much the same in the female wards of the hospital. Leprosy, once upon a time, would result in the complete isolation of the sufferer, leaving him or her to develop severe disabilities and disfigurements. With the use of antibiotics, however, there is an extremely high rate of success in curing the afflicted. Though still, estimates say that between one and two million people are permanently disabled around the world today because of leprosy. – Okaz __
