Yadakunya - The Shocking Life of Lepers.
Malama Auta Ibrahim's marriage hit the rocks the day she made the decision to come to Kano from Jigawa, in search of a cure for the leprosy which she had just contracted. "It is this sickness that stopped me from remaining in my husband's house," she complained."
"When I said I was coming to seek a cure at this place, my husband declined to give his consent, on the ground that he did not know where I was going. Finally, he said if I must come, I must not do so as his wife. So, based on that condition, I opted for a divorce and he did just that.
"I opted for the last alternative because I was not ready to fold my arms and watch the ailment rob me of my life, when my days were not yet over. So, that was how I came to this hospital."
She told Daily Trust that she left behind her four children in her village of Talatar Chanwa in Jigawa State.
When Daily Trust met her at Yadakunya Leprosy Hospital, a day after the recent Eid-el Kabir celebrations, she was optimistic that she was going to get the cure she needed, even though some of her fingers have gone ,while her legs were wrapped in thick layers of freshly worn bandage.
"The doctors are always at hand, providing all the medicines we need," she explained. Like this mother, other patients have equally left behind luxuries and the embrace of their kith and kin back in their respective homes, to get treatment for the disease. A BBC report shows Africa, Asia and Latin America as accounting for 75 per cent of its global occurrence.
The Yadakunya Leprosy Hospital was built by the missionaries in the early 1940s. Since the missionaries handed over the hospital, which is the only one of its kind in the northwest, to the Kano State government in mid 70s, no other structure was added, until in 2007 when a new male ward was constructed, Daily Trust gathered. Therefore, almost 99 per cent of the structures that made up the hospital were inherited from the Christian missionaries.
The hospital receives patients from different parts of the country and from neighbouring countries. A Nigerien, Umar Mohammed said he contracted the disease nine years ago, and was referred to Yadakunya from a hospital in Abalek Mekumendam near Agadas in Niger Republic.
One of the largest wards in the hospital is a 1943 church building which had since been converted into a male ward, and which is accommodating dozens of leprosy patients.
This room depicts the state of disrepair of the hospital's facilities. Its entire ceiling has since gone off, and its place has been taken over by dark dangling cob webs, through which the corrugated roofing sheets at the top of the structure, which patients say radiates unbearable heat in the hot season, could be seen.
"Even chickens will not live in that ward. Often cob webs fall on us, even when we are having our meals," Muhammadu Lamis, says.
The room's window frames swing without glasses in them, while the room appeared as though it was not swept for at least a year. The patients disclosed that it is terrible for them living in the room, either during the hot season or the harmattan.When the weather is hot, the roofing sheets in the room turn to automatic heat conductors, and raise the temperature to an unbearable level, while the windows give free access to harmattan breeze into the room during the cold season.
Lamis, a Katsina State indigene, complained bitterly about the ward and the general condition in the hospital.
"There was never a time we were fed for up to 20 consecutive days by the hospital authorities. Most of what we eat comes from individuals who come here to give us food," he said.
Even as he disclosed that his new tricycle was given to him by the Kano State government, the leper expressed sadness at the manner the Kano State government has abandoned issues that pertain to their welfare. He said, "you see yesterday was Sallah, but if not for the white rice they shared to us, I would have said nothing was done to us to make us enjoy the spirit of the festive period. For close to seven years now, no government has slaughtered rams or cows for us at the Sallah period."
But for 45- year-old Haladu Abdu, who said he has been on admission in the hospital for over 25 years, and who has lost a leg and all his fingers to the disease, life as patient at Yadakunya Hospital has not been so easy. This leper could only move with the aid of an old bicycle which he could not ride, but which he could only sit on and use his right leg, which is still intact, to push against the ground. "You can see, I'm still suffering from the disease. I have no fingers and have one leg," he told Daily Trust. Abdu added that their biggest problem in the hospital "is related to what they will eat and what to spend. The hospital kitchen hardly feeds us for up to 20 days. Therefore, most of the time we put our hope in God and depend on charity givers, or our relatives ,who sometimes help us out of pity."
It was learnt that other means of survival which some of the patients employ, especially those who came from far places, is to go out and beg for alms from other members of the society. While others equally take to doing jobs that ordinarily should be the exclusive preserve of men who have complete fingers.
One of the patients who has been forced by struggle for survival to venture into menial jobs, is a deaf and dumb man who gave his name as Muhammad Kurma. Appearing to be in his late forties, Muhammadu Kurma has fingers which had been removed by leprosy, and he can hardly walk because his feet have fresh sores. Therefore, he crawls on his knees most of the time. For the two consecutive days that Daily Trust visited Yadakunya, he was seen sweeping a ward frontage and washing clothes respectively. He has since taken to doing the latter, it was learnt, to supplement the handouts he gets from the hospital and charity. It was also gathered that his customers are villagers who live in communities around the hospital. Because he has no fingers on his hands, he uses the stumps that are left on his palms to wash the clothes. Not only Muhammadu Kurma, another patient Idris Usaini from Hadejia in Jigawa State,cuts hair to survive.
As the patients complained of what to eat, so they decry the state of their toilet facility, whose roofs and doors have gone off.
It was gathered that the hospital's major source of water supply is from a single well whose pumping machine constantly breaks down, thus putting the patients in acute shortage of drinking water. Whenever the pumping machine is bad, the lepers are forced to buy water at the rate of N20 per jerrycan from water vendors, until when it is put back in order. The source also added it is the doctors in the hospital that use their personal money to buy drinking water for the patients.
Daily Trust came across members of an Islamic aid foundation called Sabilul Rishad that specializes in distributing charity and propagating Islam. The representative of the chairman of the organization, Aliyu Sa'id Ahmad, disclosed that the centre went to distribute Sallah meat to the patients. He called on the state government to give special attention to the lepers, saying "these types of patients are especially in need of assistance," adding "however, they are suffering neglect."
When contacted, the Public Relations Officer of Kano State hospitals Management Board, Abbas Maje Habib, said the Board's Director General was away, and their response to the complaints would be made known when he is back.
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