Patients repay Japanese generosity Sufferers donate in turn to help victims

(May 26, 2011) Inspired by a Catholic priest, some 400 leprosy patients and their medical staff have donated 100,000 rupees (US$2,273) to aid victims of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan in March as a way of saying thank you. Patients at the Sumanahalli (‘village of people of good will’) centre, a treatment and rehabilitation facility run in Bangalore archdiocese for people suffering from leprosy, contributed the amount to Japan’s Nippon Foundation Wednesday. The foundation has been a major sponsor of multi drug therapy (MDT), an important treatment for the disease. India is a major beneficiary because it accounts for more than half the world’s leprosy cases, said Father George Kannanthanam, director of Sumanahalli. The inmates contributed from the little savings they had kept aside. The Sumanahalli society, started in 1978, treats some 400 people suffering from leprosy, HIV or other diseases. All the society’s 250-plus staff has also pledged to donate one day’s earnings. Some local schoolchildren collected around 2,000 rupees. One of the staff came forward to donate her entire month’s salary and a convent in the campus saved 30,000 rupees by cancelling a feast. “There are those without any pension who contributed just 10 to 20 rupees. They also put in whatever they could”, said the priest, who initiated a similar campaign after the last tsunami that hit Indian shores in 2004.