Leprosy Awareness Book
Patricia Devia Angarita
Patricia has 20 years of experience walking the path of leprosy from the intellectual point of view and being involved in different activities related to leprosy, its stigma and its history.
She was born in Colombia, in a city called Agua de Dios, a place that for nearly 100 years was exile for people affected by the disease of leprosy; a place that in Colombia was known as lazaretto or leprocomio and as the City of Pain. Her mother and her paternal grandmother arrived in Agua de Dios following the mandatory isolation measures that, until the early 1960s, the Colombian government had adopted regarding international protocols to stop the spread of leprosy.
The physical and emotional damage caused by the disease by not receiving timely treatment, as well as the stigma that is associated with it, along with economic limitations, social isolation, vulnerability of human rights and individual freedoms that were imposed for prevent the spread of leprosy, they caused great impact on their grandmothers; The same that also reached her parents, leading them to walk through poverty, codependency, begging and unemployment, as well as having very few opportunities to work for her own account.
Patricia has a great historical and cultural legacy that she has inherited from her family, from illustrious characters, writers, painters, musicians, poets and composers; brave men and women, exiled with leprosy and embarrassed by the stigma. Human beings who, despite all their limitations, managed to survive thanks to their resistance, talent, courage and desire for freedom.
