When I was in the media, I spent a week in Culion, Palawan. In fact, it was a holy week. Yes, that’s part of Palawan. But I don’t think you would like to go there. Culion was a leper colony. That’s where we quarantine or exile people afflicted with leprosy or Hansen’s disease in the past.
When I was there, I saw an arch that marks the boundary in the island. It reminds people of the demarcation line between those who have leprosy and those who have no leprosy. It warned people from both sides not to cross over the boundary. I also learned that whenever a woman with leprosy would give birth, the doctors would immediately separate the child from the mother. They would not allow her to touch her baby. Then, in the nursery, she can just view her baby from a distance. When a person gets leprosy, he gets it for life. Most, if not all, did not get out of Culion alive. The exile was for life.
Now, due to medical breakthroughs, we no longer exile people with leprosy to Culion. Ever since doctors came up with the MDT or multi-drug therapy, we see people healed from the disease. Once the person takes MDT, he is no longer contagious.
But the problem with leprosy is that it disfigures the person. Because he can feel no pain, when a person with leprosy wounds for example his hand, it tends to be infected. Thus, they lose a finger or two or even the entire hand. Even if the MDT cures them from leprosy, they cannot grow back their lost fingers or hand again.
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