Cured leprosy patients ready to conquer Mt Everest

KATHMANDU - Nearly three decades ago Raj Kumar Shah, then nine, had a traumatic experience that changed his entire life.

The son of a poor farmer contracted leprosy, still regarded as a scourge in the southern Terai plains where he lived. But the past has inspired him to undertake a unique venture — Shah has announced an expedition to Mt Everest, the tallest peak in the world, by cured leprosy patients.

“The villagers demanded that my parents throw me out,” remembers Shah.

“Otherwise, they threatened to ostracise my family. But my parents loved me and I was finally taken to Kathmandu valley for treatment.”

He was cured after treatment at Anandaban, Nepal’s largest leprosy hospital founded by missionaries, and after working in an NGO, opened an organisation in 2005. READ-Nepal (Rehabilitation, Empowerment and Development Nepal) provides medical assistance and support to leprosy patients.

“The mind is the most important thing,” says Shah, who uses crutches after the disease affected his fingers and toes. “If you want to do something, if you are strong mentally, you can do anything.”

To underscore that leprosy is a curable disease and not the result of divine curse and that cured patients are as able as any other person, Shah and READ-Nepal are organising the Everest Leprosy Empowerment Expedition in April 2011.

The applications have already started coming in and by July, 15 people will be chosen for a two-week training to assess their physical, mental and psychological capabilities.

Then a month-long training under Lakpa Norbu Sherpa will provide them climbing experience when they will summit Naya Kanga, a 5,844 m peak, to test their stamina for the 8,848 m high Everest.

Ten finalists will then head for the final challenge, accompanied by two Sherpas each.

Helping the project is American Everest climber Bryan Smith, who founded Helping Assist Nepal’s Disabled, and has been taking an active part in cleaning the wounds of leprosy patients in Nepal.

Among the Everest applicants is 24-year-old Saraswati Neupane, who works with a women’s group in Rupandehi district. She has pledged to rally more cured patients like her and participate in the expedition.

In January, the government of Nepal officially announced that leprosy had been “eliminated”. Elimination, however, doesn’t mean eradication but a low prevalence rate, which, in Nepal is 0.89 per 10,000 people.

In 1966, when the government started the leprosy control programme, there were 100,000 reported cases. Now, there are only 2,445 patients under treatment.

Alarmingly, however, over 80 percent of the patients are from the Terai, adjoining some of India’s poorest states, where the disease still prevails.

Most of the applications Shah has received are from the Terai.

Basudev Yadav, who works in a factory making handmade paper in Saptari district in the Terai, had to undergo reconstructive surgery after contracting leprosy when he was 15.

Today, the 35-year-old, who has battled social stigma, is raring to take up the Everest challenge.

“Society says leprosy patients are dependant on their families and can’t do anything,” Yadav says passionately. “It says they are mentally damaged.

“I want to show society that they are as able as any other abled person.”