Former Hansen’s disease patients working to have sanatoriums open to local communities

Akahata editorial (excerpts)

   Former Hansen’s disease patients are working for new legislation to open up a future of hope for residents at 13 state-run leprosy sanatoriums in Japan.

   The National Council of Leprosy Sanatorium Residents (Zenryokyo) launched a campaign to collect one million signatures in support of its enactment by next summer.

   For over a century, Japan’s successive governments imposed repressive measures on current and former Hansen’s disease patients to forcibly isolate, abort and sterilize them. This policy continued until 1996 when the Leprosy Prevention Law was finally abolished despite the fact that the disease became curable with the introduction of a drug shortly after WWII.

   In 2001, the Kumamoto District Court ruled that this policy infringed on constitutionally guaranteed human rights.

   Based on this court judgment, the government agreed with the plaintiffs’ group of former Hansen’s disease patients to compensate them, apologize, restore their honor, and promote their rehabilitation.

   The government also promised that it will guarantee sanatorium residents lifelong-stays, if they wish, and improve living conditions and medical care for them.

   The number of sanatorium residents has decreased from 5,000 in 1996 to less than 3,000, and they are aged 79 on average. They have no family members to rely on because of continuing prejudice and discrimination against Hansen’s disease patients or the past government policy of forcible sterilization and abortion.

   Sanatorium residents want to live without anxiety as members of society together with people in local communities.

   Sanatorium residents’ associations and Zenryokyo demand that the sanatoriums be open to society at large as local medical and nursing-care facilities and as museums for learning about the history of Hansen’s disease issues, not isolated from neighboring communities.

   The government, however, is refusing to open the sanatoriums to local communities on the grounds that the 1996 law to abolish the Leprosy Prevention Law provides that state-run leprosy sanatoriums give necessary care and treatments to sanatorium residents.

   “Then, let’s change the law!” Thus, the residents stood up.

   The Japanese Communist Party promised to make efforts to adopt a new law to realize sanatoriums reflecting the residents’ wishes and made representations to the government.

   Some members of the Liberal Democratic, Democratic, and Social Democratic parties also promised support for the enactment of a new law.

   The need now for the government and the Diet is to implement a policy that will meet former Hansen’s disease patients’ demands so that they can say, “We are glad to be alive.”                                                              - Akahata, September 20, 2007