Living with leprosy

Living with leprosy

Leprosy is a disease most associated with the developing world. And yet, on a bend of the Mississippi river in the Louisiana swamps is Carville, a former hospital and community for sufferers of the disease.  An old sugar plantation, it became the only federal facility in the continental US to care for patients with leprosy, which is also  known as Hansen's Disease. Today, with effective treatment available, only eight elderly patients remain. Here, Jim Krahenbuhl, the director of the  National Hansen's Disease Programme, looks back at this history of Carville, which once housed up to 500 people.