Japan Press Weekly

Tweet

2013 February 20 - 26 [WELFARE]

Training of guides to Hansen’s disease sanatorium urgently needed

A civil group supporting former Hansen disease patients on February 24 held a study meeting in Maebashi City, Gunma Prefecture, to train volunteer guides to explain the history and current situation of the patients’ national sanatorium to visitors.

Amid the widespread attention to issues related to the disease, the number of visitors to the national sanatorium, Kuryu Rakusen-en, in Gunma’s Kusatsu Town is growing every year.

The number of visitors is expected to increase further after a special facility, which was used to punish patients by imprisonment, will be restored in the sanatorium in 2014.

The average age of Rakusen-en residents is 83.5. This makes it difficult for the residents themselves to give visitors a tour of the sanatorium. It is an urgent task for them to secure volunteer guides.

Using a guidebook published by the residents’ association, participants of the study meeting learned the outline of Rakusen-en and the history of suffering that former patients had received under the state policy of segregating leprosy patients.

Kodama Yuji, vice chair of the residents’ association, said to the participants, “We published the guidebook as our last statement. I hope that you relate what we had experienced to future generations.”