Leprosy's Last Stand-or Early Days of a War of Attrition?

摘要

Shunned by his home village, You Yu-Gan has lived in a moat-ringed compound here in eastern China's Jiangsu Province for 40 years. In 1970, the farmer was diagnosed with leprosy and bundled off to Jiangyan Leprosarium. Treatment with the antibiotic dapsone tamed his infection, but his hands and feet were irrevocably disfigured and You, like many leprosy victims, languished in quarantine until a drug cocktail in the 1980s brought a long-elusive cure. Free to leave the leprosarium, You opted to stay. The other 118 residents are "like family," explains You, 65, who earns a small income by helping in the clinic. Besides, he confesses, "I have nowhere else to go."