Bhopal (UCAN): At 66, Brunda Mohanty vividly remembers the painful situation when he left home as a 14-year-old boy. His mother had died early in his childhood and people in his ancestral village of Nirakarpur, in Puri district of India’s Odisha state, loved him so much.
 
But that was until some patches appeared on his body. “Soon my loved ones began to treat me as an outcast,” he said in a soft, forgiving voice. Slowly, he realised he had contracted Hansen’s Disease, or leprosy, a disease Indians consider a curse.

HONG KONG (SE): In 1958, the Chinese government conducted a thorough search across the mainland to identify people affected with Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). It then relocated them to extremely remote areas of the country.

Fung Ginxian was a young girl at the time, but had suffered from extremely serious Poliomyelitis.