Another feather in Gujarat's cap: Modi

Ahmedabad, Jan 30 (UNI) Chief Minister Narendra Modi today pointed out that Gujarat was the first state to discard the old British law which enabled a spouse to seek divorce on grounds of leprosy and lamented that the first enemy of a leprosy patient is his own family.

He was addressing a function organised jointly by ILO and Sasakawa Memorial Health Foundation of Japan here, on the occasion of anti-leprosy day. Coincidently it is also the martyrdom day of Mahatma Gandhi.

''Instead of leprosy patients coming to us for treatment we go in search of them and see to it that they get proper treatment. I was not really aware of the impact of our leprosy eradication programme until I heard the speech of President APJ Kalam in the Raipur declaration of January 2004, when he said that all other states should follow Gujarat model in leprosy eradication programme,'' Modi said.

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