City’s sole leprosy hosp is home to even ex-patients for up to 80 years

Sitting amidst the elderly inmates in the radio hall of Wadala’s Acworth Municipal Hospital for Leprosy, Charudutt’s demeanour belies the fact that he’s overcome by emotion.

- Sumitra.DebRoy timesgroup.com

Mumbai: As he dissects his 78th birthday cake, the hall roars to life. Admired equally by the staff and patients, the hospital’s longest-staying inmate was born at the very hospice in 1944, and his birthdays have come to be an event that warrants jubilant celebration.

Details of if and when the dreaded bacterial disease afflicted him are hazy but hospital records confirm his parents and sister succumbed to it at the very hospital decades ago, and Charudutt never left. Many of the other residents of the facility share a similar story. Mumbai’s only dedicated leprosy centre, Acworth Leprosy Hospital that has offered treatment and shelter to thousands, clocks 132 years on Monday.

Currently, it serves as a home to 67 patients, of whom only two have active leprosy. The remaining are former patients, mostly above 60 years —many living with deformities, crawled up fingers and toes, who decided to stay back despite their recovery decades ago. “Many didn’t want to return to their families and the society which had ruthlessly rejected them. So, Acworth Hospital made a home for them,” shares medical superintendent Dr Amita Pednekar, adding most residents have been at the facility for 40-70 years.