KARACHI, May 16: Speakers at a meeting on Thursday said that after controlling leprosy in the country, the Marie Adelaide Leprosy Centre has focused on controlling tuberculosis and blindness in the area.
They were speaking at the meeting organized by the MALC to hand over the first prize, a car, to the brother-sister winner team who had won the prize in a fund-raising scheme of the centre.
Giving a resume of the centre, he said that French Catholic nuns belonging to the Daughters of Heart of Mary, responding to the call of the Archbishop of Karachi, started the leprosy work in a slum area off McLeod (now I. I. Chundrigar) Road and set up a centre named after Marie Adelaide — a French noblewoman — in 1956.
They said that the living conditions in the lepers colony were sub-human, where sewage from gutters overflowed and mixed with garbage, and adding horror were huge sewer rats which feasted on the limbs of the patients who due to loss of sensation caused by the disease were unable to feel the rat bites.
They said that the work which started in such conditions picked up slowly and with time, and donations mainly from Germany, the centre expanded and provided services to entire country and within four decades the aim of the project, to control leprosy, was achieved.
They said in 1996 the leprosy dominance in the country had declined to less than one active case in 10,000 population.
As the disease ceases to be a public health problem now, the centre is monitoring the old patients and looks out for the new ones, so that the disease did not re-emerge.
They said after controlling leprosy, the centre had started its efforts in the fields of controlling tuberculosis and blindness.
They said the centre, which ran on charity, received major chunk of its donations from Germany, while a little portion it received from local charities and it also organized fund-raising events, one such project was to raise funds through raffle tickets, prize of which was a car, to fund its activities.
One of the pioneer nuns and a Mexican pharmacist who had started the centre in 1956, Sister Berenice Vargas, and the centre’s chief executive Dr Ashfaq Ali Khan who spoke at the meeting and urged the philanthropists to come forward and donate generously so that the poor patients could be treated properly.
Later, Sister Vargas and Dr Khan handed over the keys of the Daihatsu Cuore to the winners — Maiza and her brother Hamza — at the meeting on Thursday.
