About Us

St. Joseph’s Leprosy Patients Society is a non-profit making organization, working assiduously towards the development of the lepers since its inception. All of us well know that Leprosy is also called as Hansen's disease. It is a chronic infectious disease caused by Mycobacterium leprae. This disease affects the skin, the peripheral nerves, mucosal surfaces of the upper respiratory tract and the eyes. It occurs at all ages ranging from early childhood to old age. Hansen’s disease can be recognized by appearance of patches of skin that may look lighter or darker than the normal skin. Sometimes the affected skin areas may be reddish. Loss of feeling in these skin patches is common. We work with such persons nearly for more than three decades. We continue to work with these lepers and we take a sample of one such person’s skin or nerve to look for the bacteria under the microscope, and confirm the diagnosis.