Leprosy Isolation Essay

Isolation of leprosy patients

What started as a problem with a horrific disease, lead to isolation of leprosy patients. It was hard for these patients to settle and make homes; communities feared the spreading of illness. The government took an old plantation to create a hospital for the leprosy patients. The old plantation was called hospital #66 or better known as Carville. “Over a long time period, the disease can be disfiguring, and societies have stigmatized victims of the disease. This attribute is deeply discrediting since the stigmatized individual is disqualified from full social acceptance. Leprosy was thus dreaded, not because it killed, but because it left one alive with no hope”. (P1. And 2, Sato, H., & Frantz, J. (2005). Termination of the leprosy isolation policy in the US and japan: Science, policy changes, and the garbage can model.) People deemed with this Disease were brought to Carville mandatory to be quarantined; some patients were brought in shackles against there will. Patients were forced to leave everything they knew and loved behind, including friends, family and children.

While scientists worked to find a cure, policyholders that conducted legislative procedures were defining and enacting the problem; policies were designed to isolate sick patients as prevention of the further spread of the disease.

Patients were even feared by medical staff and did not want to aide in helping these sick patients. Seeing the needs of these patients, a group of sisters named Daughters of Charity of St. Vincent de Paul stepped up and provided compassion. The disease is first noticed by skin change to usually hands and feet. In the movie Triumph at Carville directed by John Wilhelm and Sally Squires, one patient sa...

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... isolation policy provided patients with some social support, but continuously deprived them of their civil liberties. Furthermore, the policy as an authoritative statement on the disease may have fostered the social stigma associated with a belief that the disease is a dreadful contagion, thereby maintaining a hurdle to patients' reintegration into society. Evidently, the policy's abolition was not easily accomplished nor was achieved solely by advances in scientific knowledge”. (P. 10)

Carville took on what feared the public on multiple levels and were able to move past it. As dreadful as it was for the patients to go through, they were the first to say that all the pain was worth it. The Daughters of charity and the doctors took on a daunting task and made it ok. The patients all commented that the sisters showed love and compassion making it feel like home.