More help for lepers

More help for lepers

The articles on leprosy by K. Basrie in The Jakarta Post of Jan. 29, 1996 were very interesting, yet for me they raised more questions than they answered. In Jakarta, I remember seeing many lepers begging at traffic lights and was horrified by their plight.

K. Basrie's articles are compassion seeking, and I support them. But he does not give any statistics on leprosy in Indonesia, nor do we know whether leprosy is being eradicated - or on the increase. Nor does he tell us how leprosy starts, whether it is infectious and why it seemingly only afflicts poor villagers.

One horrific point he does mention is that these poor sufferers are not looked after by the government. Whilst the institutions "are heavily subsidized by the government" the lepers still have to pay Rp 9,000 per month! It saddens me that the government can authorize millions of dollars for aircraft development, yet cannot come up with a few million rupiah more for the lepers.

Come on, let's see a bit more compassion from the government, at least for the chronically ill who have no way of providing for themselves. Why not also some sort of disability pension, so that cured lepers and other chronically disabled people will be encouraged to go back to their homes, or even to try to seek employment - in the knowledge that they are not going to be a financial burden to others.

Finally, there should be an NGO to lobby for government funds as well as public donations; and a program bring about the understanding that recovered lepers are no different than anyone else.

I hope action can be taken to create more public awareness of this terrible disease.

DAVID J BOOTH

Sanur, Bali