Alheri: the leprosy village that never empties

Mohammed Idris gave up a bank cleaning job and a life in Gwagwalada to go into a secluded colony for people living with leprosy. He’s been the butt of intense stigma from his former life in banking. “They take away anything I touch while working and they burn it. Things like that happened to me […]

Mohammed Idris gave up a bank cleaning job and a life in Gwagwalada to go into a secluded colony for people living with leprosy.
He’s been the butt of intense stigma from his former life in banking. “They take away anything I touch while working and they burn it. Things like that happened to me there,” he says.
He first took two months leave of absence to seek treatment. Eventually he left the job entirely.
Eighteen months later, he’s fully treated for the condition and has since picked up a new trade mending shoes in the shade of a tree at Alheri Special Village, Yangoji,
He doesn’t beg on the streets, as many in his situation might, but he can’t go back and face a society ready to condemn him for his condition and its inconvenience.

Swelling village

Experts kick against the word leper, insisting it is both archaic and derogatory to describe people living with leprosy (the allowed description for affected people).
Idris has found a home in Alheri since it opened in 2007 to take in people under care of the Leprosy Mission-Nigeria, which provides them drugs.
Each of the 29 house blocks in Alheri has three units—one per patient and their family giving them support while they undergo treatment.
Now it is threatened with overpopulation. It started at a rate of one household per unit. Now a single room holds an entire household—man, wife or wives, children and grandchildren.
All use the five boreholes that serve the village—though one is not in use now.
Their children attend a school built on the grounds and their mothers take antenatal care at an onsite clinic which caters to residents’ TB and leprosy drugs.
“More patients flowed in when we started with free drugs, even from other communities. But these days we see nothing less than 15, 20 patients,” says Halimat Yusuf, chief nursing officer at Alheri’s clinic.

Missed opportunity

What’s kept Idris apart is the deformity that came with his condition. Leprosy deadens nerves in body extremities such that they lose sensation and become prone to injuries.
“The disability surrounding leprosy is the basis for stigma,” said Dr Sunday Udo, TLM national director.
Physical disability can be avoided if the disease is detected early on and treated accordingly but many with the condition do not report until too late.
Among 3805 new cases reported in 2013, at least 12% of them already had deformities before they were reported.
Leprosy is curable and treatment is free using multi-drug therapy that’s been in use for decades, experts stress.
Some 2,000 patients have been treated in the last 20 years across states where TLM works.

No way forward or out

If Idris can take care of himself, Aliyu Abubakar has no livelihood. His disability is so severe, he needed a preventing-disability workshop for help.
TLM trains family members to administer first aid on patients who injure their limbs in daily routines—but are unable to feel the injuries. It also provides protective gear to protect their limbs from constant injury.
But getting Abubakar to fend for himself is impossible without a political will for government to link the patients to skills-acquisition programmes and stop street begging. (Not all beggars in peculiar body covering are people living with leprosy. Many just want to take on the guise when they beg, notes the mission.)
“Most are old and some cannot engage in meaningful livelihood. There is a need  to link their children with scholarship programmes,” says Constance Omoudu, TLM’s project manager for socioeconomic development.
And preferential treatment hit its attempt to get funding hard recently when the mission established two cooperative groups and guaranteed loans at Garki microfinance bank.
“The bank kept saying its chairman wasn’t within the country, he had travelled out. It was obvious they didn’t want to give the loan,” says Omoudu.
“If they can get such loans, it will help them engage in small scale business enterprise.”
Salisu Yahaya, 22, is not looking for business until he finishes his education at the village school. He doesn’t have leprosy, but chose to live with his mother—who got the condition at age 12 and has since married and been divorced from Yahaya’s father.
He says he only helps his mother sweep, wash and cook—things she finds difficult. But there is no saying when mother and child might leave Alheri.
Instead, mother is moving on to start a new family after marrying a blind man she met in Alheri.