China vows big spending to renovate leprosy villages

BEIJING, May 15 (Reuters) China is to invest 36 million dollars to improve hundreds of isolated leprosy villages where 21,000 recovered patients still live as outcasts, the Health Ministry said.

Those diagnosed with leprosy in China were once exiled forcibly to remote ''leper colonies'', a practice which ended in the 1980s when a hugely successful multi-drug therapy was introduced.

The disease has now been officially eradicated in China, but the villages remain partly because the patients were unable to rebuild their lives after being institutionalised for decades.

The National Development and Reform Commission, the top planning body, has approved a budget of 276 million yuan (35.9 million dollars) for the renovation of the more than 600 leprosy villages, the Health Ministry said.

''The plan is to revamp the infrastructure, install necessary living facilities and medical and rehabilitation equipment as we adjust or merge the existing villages in 1-2 years to improve the inhabitants' quality of life,'' the ministry said.

One third of the villages are in China's poorest counties and nearly half the houses were dilapidated and dangerous, the ministry said in a statement on its Web site (www.moh.gov.cn).

Leprosy is a curable disease of the skin and nerves but its victims have long been ostracised by society worldwide. The World Health Organisation says it has been eliminated from 113 of 122 countries where leprosy was considered a public health problem in 1985.

REUTERS SLD KN1533