The Hindu : New Delhi News : `Fighting fear is the real battle'

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Friday, Jan 28, 2005

New Delhi

New Delhi

`Fighting fear is the real battle'

By Bindu Shajan Perappadan

P.K. Gopal

NEW DELHI, JAN. 27. The travel has been long and gruelling for P.K. Gopal, the little boy destined to become the face of the disease that continues to plague India. Thirty years after this 12-year-old first noticed a leprosy patch on his body, little did he realise that the "patch" would guide and shape his life ahead, helping heal and touch millions across the globe.

As a boy, Gopal's condition remained misdiagnosed till he reached his final year at college after which he was admitted to a government hospital where he stayed for two years. But he continued to study and was discharged, free of leprosy and with a degree in economics. Today, after having served as president of the Integration Dignity and Economic, an international non-profit organisation where pioneers and leadership are made up primarily of people affected by leprosy, he has retired, but continues to help provide treatment and rehabilitation to those with leprosy.

Dr. Gopal was in Delhi on Thursday to receive the International Leprosy Union Award at Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti on his way to South Africa. Having started his career as a rehabilitation officer at the Sacred Heart Leprosy Centre in Kumbakonam in India he was the first to set up a rehabilitation unit for those afflicted with leprosy in South India.

Many years of service and numerous awards later, Dr. Gopal is among those engaged in the last leg of the fight against leprosy. "While I am certain that we will be able to cure and eradicate the illness we will have to work for another 30 years to make sure that the people afflicted with the illness are accepted and rehabilitated in society,'' said Dr. Gopal, speaking about the major challenges that the programme faces now.

Now working at Erode in Tamil Nadu, Dr. Gopal along with his `friends' has managed to spread the message to eradicate the illness across the globe. "We now need to work on telling people about how to recognise early signs, get treatment fast and become economically independent. I have noticed that economic independence gives you the courage and the will power to try and become part of society. My basic aim is to help people get back on their feet. And while drugs are available there is no effort to rehabilitate them, we have to change a mindset that goes against them,'' says Dr. Gopal.

Talking about himself and how the ailment changed his life he says: "My family was very poor at that time, but they stood by me and loved me, taking care and helping me get the medical attention that they could afford. But not everyone is that privileged. Many are turned away and left to live a life of shame and rejection, I have lived through that, when my college teacher told me that I could not take my exams because I had leprosy... the fear is still very much alive in the country and fighting that is our real battle."

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