Peter Waddup, CEO - The Leprosy Mission Great Britain

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In many of the countries in which we work in Asia and Africa leprosy colonies still exist. Home to millions of people around the globe they are a relic of the past. A time when there was no cure for leprosy. Places on the outskirts of town where people were unceremoniously dumped when they began to show signs of leprosy. I even visited a leprosy colony earlier this year in India nicknamed 'the dumping ground'. How utterly defiling and degrading is this? That a human being like you or me can literally be treated like a piece of rubbish. It is utterly heartbreaking.

Yet the stranglehold of fear surrounding leprosy can see a once-loved family member simply dumped. Just as we might take an unwanted household item to the tip, they too can be cast out to keep a family's reputation intact.

Our job in the UK is to amplify the voices of some of the world’s most marginalised people. This includes the millions of people living in leprosy colonies. These people often have no toilets or a clean water supply. They live in homes we would deem unsuitable and unsafe to house our pets in. Often they don't even have land rights meaning they can be forced to leave the colony at a moment's notice. Swept away once again like a discarded chip wrapper. An unending cycle of degradation and rejection.

Second only to the inexplicable fear surrounding leprosy is ignorance. What we in the 'developed world' do not consider is that we are fighting the same battles in Asia and Africa that were fought in the UK 400 years ago. Leprosy is largely a disease of poverty. It thrives where there is poor housing, a lack of sanitation and malnutrition. It was through improvements in public health and living conditions that saw the last indigenous case of leprosy in the UK diagnosed in 1798. It is only by giving a voice to 'the unwanted' that the gulf between our circumstances might be addressed.

I have been so fortunate this week to be given two valuable opportunities to amplify the voices of people living in leprosy colonies today. Tonight is the Asian Achievers' Awards 2024 held in London's Hilton Park Lane hotel.

We are so excited that The Leprosy Mission is the chosen partner for these prestigious awards celebrating Asian excellence in the UK. We have the opportunity to bring the plight of people living in leprosy colonies to 350 movers and shakers in the British Asian community. People whose lives are lightyears away yet they share a common cultural heritage. Crucially they hold such power and influence that they could help to end leprosy in Asia. It is a golden opportunity and I am praying I find the right words!

Secondly, I am incredibly thankful to have received a phone call, out of the blue, from a national journalist in the UK. She wanted to know more about life in a leprosy colony! It is so very hard to get leprosy in the UK press simply because people in the UK don't get leprosy today!

To me, this seems a very parochial outlook. As we know from climate change and the pandemic, Neglected Tropical Diseases, including leprosy, are a concern for us as a global society. They simply affect the daily lives of people living in the developing world the very most.

Across the world, we have a shared responsibility to wipe out diseases like leprosy that shouldn't even exist today. The walls of the colonies need to come down! Nobody should be confined to a lifetime of poverty, neglect and lack of opportunity simply because of curable disease. This is something every person should know!