Himachal leaves leprosy patients in the lurch

Ambika Sharma in Solan

Himachal Pradesh may figure among the 34 states and UTs on the threshold of leprosy elimination with the recorded prevalence rate of one case per 10,000 people. Yet, for 18 patients under treatment at the Zonal Leprosy Hospital in Solan, the reality is ugly. Most of these patients suffer from WHO-specified Grade 2 disability — visible deformity restricting movement. The zonal hospital was supposed to cater to six districts of Himachal Pradesh. It also gets referred patients from the IGMC Shimla.

The disease continues to be seen as a stigma in society and, worse, alienates the patients from their families. Most of these 18 patients have spent decades in the hospital, their permanent home. Cut off from the world, they find solace in each other’s company. Their only link with the world outside is the doctors and the paramedics.

State health department sources say the disease is far from over as 42 patients across Solan are being treated at their homes. Leprosy elimination by 2018 is a vision projection of the Prime Minister’s Office. Rehabilitation is the key focus of the National Leprosy Elimination Programme. 

The 18 patients were shifted to a building of the Community Health Centre (CHC) at Dharampur in 2014 as the old shelter home at Mandhodhar was transferred to the education department for building a college. Mandhodhar offered adequate sunshine and space to the patients to move about and carry out their daily activities with much ease. The hospital was originally located at Mashobra in Shimla.

The first casualty of the relocation is peace: the CHC is located along a busy highway where vehicular noise and suffocating dust from an under-construction four-lane road causes additional distress. And now, they have been moved to a 30x20 ft hall at Chambaghat in Solan where the disabled and visually impaired patients jostle for space for their daily routine. This is despite a high court order specifying that the state is under legal obligation to provide them a dignified life. 

District leprosy officer, Dr Udit Rastogi, says the health department is “in the process of seeking clearances” for constructing the new hospital building, and that the Chambaghat shelter was only a make-shift arrangement.

The fact is the state government has failed to construct a new hospital despite an administrative clearance for Rs 10 crore in 2014 at Lohanjee on the Kumarhatti-Nahan highway. Though the chief minister recently laid the new hospital’s foundation stone, there is a bleak hope of the building coming up. According to a reply filed by the state government in the high court in response to a PIL, there is no place for a “stop-gap arrangement.”

Ram Singh in his seventies was admitted to the hospital in 1998. “The space in the new place is hardly enough to accommodate the health staff and patient care is almost negligible,” says Singh. Another patient, Kaltu (88), has been ailing since 1992. “The patients are at the mercy of the government. Only a new hospital at the earliest can serve us better.”