Leprosy

This building is located just a few hundred meters away from the old Sungai Buluh Hospital, which used to house the Malaysian Leprosy Relief Association. Those days the old Sungai Buluh Hospital specializes in the treatment for leprosy that makes it practical for the association to be in the area.

Now, the place will very soon be replaced by the medical faculty of Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM) and the construction works have already started.

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Leprosy (Kusta in BM) is a chronic infectious disease caused by the bacterium Mycobacterium leprae, that’s what I got from wikipedia. Left untreated, leprosy can be progressive, causing permanent damage to the skin, nerves, limbs, and eyes.

The victims of leprosy had to be obscured from mixing with the society at large due to the severity of the disease that known to be contagious and perilous. They were then placed in this area until they fully recovered.

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Do you wonder why I write about this?

Well, I was just thinking about the time when I was little apart from realizing my blog is not been maintained lately, and to have a little something to chatter about.

When I was little there was a man in our place called Pok Ya.

I was kind of perplexed over what my friends say he doesn’t have a hand. I noticed one of his hands was always wrapped in a bandage with plastic bag in the outer layer. I had a weird feeling every time walk past him because of the eccentric tales heard from friends of similar age.

And he was not too familiar to us either because only once in a blue moon we would see him in our village.

When I grew up a little bigger, I then learned that he’s been confined to a place in Kuala Lumpur. And as years went by, only then I drew closer to the fact that; he was apparently under treatment for leprosy in Sungai Buluh Hospital.

The other day I chanced upon seeing the abandoned buildings in Sungai Buluh that used to be a relegate to the community of leprosy sufferers. Now the threat of this fatal disease is no longer prevalence in the country and the place has been deserted all these while with the buildings left to rot.

But then, it will very soon be busy with activities of future medical doctors as the UiTM medical faculty is now being built in the area.

The time when I shot these pictures, Pok Ya’s face came to my mind. I knew he was once roaming in the vicinity.

I felt as if the apparition of Pok Ya was there in the trail.



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