"Please don't call me a leper"
People with leprosy say the "L" word hurts!
They say words and labels are as painful as leprosy's scars sometimes even more so.
"Please don't call us lepers," they say. The word carries too much ugliness. The word has been used by misinformed people and portrays us as unlovable, untouchable, dirty, dangerous, and even sinful. Leprosy is not a sin, and it should not be a lifetime sentence.
Tell your friends, they say. Tell media, churches, pastors, missionaries, historians, and everyone you meet...tell them all, we are not lepers. We got a disease from a germ.
Thankfully, the disease is curable. Thank them for the many hurtful words they've retired from their vocabularies:, retard, cripple, and worse. Ask them to add leper to this awful list.
People get leprosy from a germ, mycobacterium leprae. Today they can be cured. In many cases people with leprosy will be cured with no visible deformities. They can return to their work as farmers, teachers, students, mothers, fathers, husbands, wives and friends.
People ask us, "What should we call them, then?"
Think about what you call people who have had chicken pox, pneumonia, shingles or emphysema. They are "people with chicken pox," or "people with emphysema."
That's what we are. Say our friends with leprosy. We are people with leprosy. While in treatment, we are leprosy patients.
You may have used this stigmatizing word in the past (You were not unkind, just repeating the language you learned as children). Please help us end the "L" word and the pain it inflicts.
. . . Leprosy is an ancient disease, but it is also a disease that is around today. It infects cells in the skin but it does not make limbs drop off. It is not highly infectious or a skin disease. It is not fatal or incurable and it has NOT been eradicated. . .
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