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The situation in 2016 is different than 3 years ago when the Government of India and the World Health Organization started to promote the concept that Leprosy has been eradicated from India. It was a play on statistics that has come back to haunt organizations like New Hope., We are finding new cases of young people with leprosy. It’s a long complicated medical situation caused by the unusual possible long incubation and patients considered cured not actually cured due to a change in treatment policy at Government Primary Health Care Clinics.

The patients who come are often poverty line begging, aged, and cataract blind. The Love Bundles are needed out of compassion for them. Additionally we are responsible for such items as bedsheets for the 24 bed in the ward and for upgrading social amenities to the patients.

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Sadly it is now seen that many young people are coming with leprosy and with early deformities. This is very sad and frightening because without care the truth is that many of these young people will be socially outcast. This ostracisation leads to loss of job and eventually they turn to begging and live in leprosy colonies.

We are faced in 2024 with the challenge to offer a one day a week meal to 45 leprosy patients in the a remote out of the way place near the city of Sambalpur, Odisha. How we came to contact them and visa versa is incredible. They are simply a community of leprosy patients, severely deformed other persons and mentally challenged women several of whom were married to now deceased leprosy patients.

BREAKFAST FOR HOMELSS WOMEN IN CITY

Again we don’t ask why they are homeless. We offer breakfast to all the women and to a few men who are permanently in the ‘ward’ and unable to go anywhere; all long stores. We are raising It’s a simple heading. Through a newspaper article the late Vasu Gabriel came into contact with a Homeless Shelter. Established by the Visakhapatnam Municipality by order of the Supreme Court that ordered all major cities to make this provision. In its irony no funds were given so a small non government organization applied to manage it with a national charity giving one meal in the evening. What the Court ordered was a good thing but like many of these ‘orders’ it’s far from what is needed at real root level. It’s on the third floor of an old building, on a main road so very noisy. The Municipality gave one item; a mattress.

This woman came, stayed 2 months and her sister came and they left. We were told she left her home stressed and traumatized after her husbands murder.

We are providing the women with breakfast and lunch. Several of the really struggling men also receive a food pack.

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New Hope has now provided bed sheets twice, a blanket last winter, chairs for the women and five times we distributed Love Bundles. The rooms are divided male-female and on average there are 15 women there at all times. All for many different reasons and we don’t ask. Any woman who feels she needs a night shelter fits into the New Hope ‘open door’ policy. The men are more and it’s an oddity because with an ‘address’ some of the homeless men have fund part time work or casual funds locally for lunch meals and trying as much as possible to have funds to offer more meals on a regular basis.