Healthy and participative ageing. Fighting the stigma on leprosy-affected and cured. Ensuring human rights. Dr S D Gokhale, President, International Longevity Centre (ILC) based in Pune has been there, done that and doing more. In Bangalore recently to attend a seminar on the leprosy-affected and human rights issues, Gokhale is making sure that no voice goes unheard, nobody pushed into the background.        

Gokhale’s profile runs into pages. An MSW from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, a doctorate from Banaras University, Executive Secretary of the Indian Council of Social Welfare, president of International Federation on Ageing and UN advisor on ageing, Editor of ‘Maratha Kesari’ etc. The Community-Aided Sponsorship Program (CASP), started by Gokhale national organization for the development of the child, family and community offers a hand to the underprivileged children.

The social scientist talks about ILC and International Leprosy Union (ILU). “Basically, we work on policies, research and training in the areas of ageing focusing on human rights. Right now, we are trying to bring the leprosy-affected and those cured back into the mainstream and stop the discrimination they have to face.”

Earlier, Gokhale had prepared a report on ‘Leprosy and Law’ and submitted it to the Home Ministry, Law Ministry and Human Rights Commission. “We found that there are 19 laws which discriminated leprosy patients. Last week, we filed a petition in Parliament - to the chairman of the Rajya Sabha. They have agreed to make an inquiry into it.”

Further, he says the Prevention of Begging Act is outdated. “It was the British who brought in the Act, which said leprosy has no cure and those affected should be indefinitely detained. It continues even now and we have taken this up with the HRC.” Gokhale repents that most people remain blissfully ignorant about the multi-drug therapy cure for leprosy. It is mostly here in India that leprosy affected and those who are cured are segregated,” he adds.

“For these people, what we are trying to do is organise activities. One is self-care which is teaching the leprosy-affected to take care of themselves. This is important as the patients do not feel any sensation. For eg, when the patient holds a steaming hot cup of tea, they don’t feel anything which leads to burns. What we do is provide them brass cups and those with wooden handles.” 

The second is the training programme which is providing assisting devices and aides for the aged. There are 4,000 such devices. And not just a walking stick.

He says,“there are ‘Lokadoots’ to educate the leprosy patients. The ‘Lokadoots’ are scouts who persuade the leprosy-affected to go for treatment especially in endemic states like Bihar, UP, Orissa, MP. We provide them transport to go to villages and assure the patients that they can be cured and they themselves were cured. We also had the President honouring 20 ‘Lokadoots’.

There is the ‘Madhyamdhoot’ which is communication through media. We give journalists fellowship on write-ups about leprosy and related facts.

“I am confident that we can remove the  stigma once we are able to prove the quality of our work. The thing is we ade    a mistake of keeping leprosy a secret. Thankfully, the HIV-affected is slowly coming out in the open. The combination of poverty, leprosy and womanhood is the worst scenario. So we have to fight on. And things will change,” he is optimistic.