Coutts Woman

Angel of Nagpur

When Leah Pattison left her home in County Durham in 1995 to teach English to young girls at a leper colony in India, she planned to stay six months. Little did she imagine she would abandon her plans, emigrate permanently, set-up START, a charity, with her colleague Usha Patil and, ultimately, contract the disease.

It was shortly after she arrived that Leah was moved by the story of two little girls, Mina and Nambrata, who lived within the leper colony. They had watched their father douse their mother, a leprosy sufferer, with kerosene, and set her alight. He later killed himself. “I was 23 and realised, for the first time in my life, just how lucky and privileged I was. I went on to meet many cases of women whose lives, as a consequence of leprosy, had been almost unbearable to endure. This continued to fuel my anger at the terrible injustices they suffered,” explains Leah. “I just could not imagine myself being able to cope under the same circumstances.”

Usha, her co-founder of START, suffered from leprosy in childhood and also lived in the leper colony. “She was determined not to let leprosy dictate her future,” explains Leah. “Initially, the women Usha and I try to help are not very forthcoming with their problems because they have spent many years being physically and emotionally abused. They don’t find it easy to trust people. And they have lost their ability to express emotion, having survived by containing their feelings.”

Known locally as the ‘Angel of Nagpur’, for her work in the slums of the Maharashtra-based city, she has dedicated her life to treating and caring for women who are abused and abandoned by their families and society, because they suffer from leprosy, HIV and mental illnesses. She’s received many honours for her work, including the prestigious Beacon Prize, the Nobel Prize of the charitable world, for individuals who have made exceptional contributions to charitable causes.

They had watched their father douse their mother, a leprosy sufferer, with kerosene, and set her alight. He later killed himself.

As a Fine Arts graduate Leah believes, “Because I am an artist, I had a natural desire and curiosity to see the world and humanity at its most extreme. I wanted to know everything that being a leprosy patient entailed and, by asking questions of those I met I discovered women with the disease were much more ostracised and isolated than men. Behind the disfigurements and scars of leprosy were individuals desperate to be recognised for who they were, and not what their scars represented. I am primarily motivated by anger at the injustices of such individuals.”

Leah has found one of the simplest ways to break down these barriers is human contact. She says, “These women have been starved of the basic human touch, such as putting an arm around their shoulder. Our ladies love the affection we show them as it reinforces the notion they are not merely ‘leprosy patients, untouchables’ but ordinary people who we consider as no different to ourselves or anyone else.”

Inevitably though, the discovery that Leah had herself contracted the disease came as a devastating shock. “I just assumed I would not be at any risk of catching it because I was a fit and healthy person from the UK. Perhaps I was a little bit naïve,” she concedes. “I was stunned. I was then frightened that I may also end up with deformity. The idea that my hands would possibly be affected was worrying because I am an artist.”

Leah’s family offered unconditional love and support, unlike the families of the women she was trying to help, and this further reinforced the need for her work. “I was diagnosed and treated for leprosy in the very early stages and, as a consequence, realised just how easy it was to cure,” says Leah, who is now clear of the disease. “So many Indian women conceal leprosy through fear of being rejected. The result is they go on to develop more advanced deformity which is irreversible. The nerves are damaged making their hands and feet completely insensitive, and marking them within society for the rest of their lives as leprosy patients, even though they may be completely cured.”

Ironically, treatment for the disease is free of charge and provided in almost every area of India through government dispensaries. “This makes it more tragic that so many women deny themselves early diagnosis and treatment through the fear of their husbands and families finding out and rejecting them,” says Leah.

Of all her experiences within the community, Leah highlights that of ‘Mina’, the daughter of a leprosy sufferer, as the most profound. Mina had suffered years of gang-rapes on the streets of Nagpur, and had been forced to drink alcohol during the attacks. As a result of her ordeals, Mina developed schizophrenia and alcoholism. Leah and Usha discovered her lying under a blanket covered with flies.

“She asked us to leave her alone to die,” recalls Leah. “Pulling away the blanket revealed a head wound teeming with maggots, which had worked their way into her ear and were in danger of entering her brain.” The local doctors told Usha and Leah to let Mina die. They ignored the advice. Instead, the pair physically held Mina down, and removed the maggots by hand.

Mina’s schizophrenia made her volatile, making the daily dressing of the head wound difficult. Crowds gathered and were restrained by local traffic police. But, two months after starting a course of drugs, “a different, more articulate person evolved who spoke of tales of terrible abuse and misery,” recalls Leah. “Three years on, Mina is alive and well and enjoying life.”

She adds, “Mina proved to Usha and I that, really, where there is life, there is always hope.”

www.start-leprosy.org