Patrícia Duarte DEPS, Brunella de A. FREITAS, Cícero D. CHICON, Larissa C. CASER, Líbia A. MENDES, Marianna M. SIQUEIRA, Luciana QUINTELA, Manoel A. CATARINA

Have we learned from the mistakes of the past? Segregation of leprosy patients until the twentieth century

Será que aprendemos com os erros do passado? Segregação dos pacientes portadores de hanseníase até o século XX

Published in III UNESC Seminar of Medical Humanities / I UFES Seminar of Medical Humanities

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Hansen’s disease, also known as "leprosy" in Brazil until the end of the 60s in the last century, is an infectious disease of low contagiousness. Once the cause was unknown, in Medieval Age, leprosy was a disease related to divine punishment, and leprosy patients were stigmatized and isolated in "leper colonies". The suffering of those who were diagnosed with leprosy lingers to nowadays, and the current article brings events that occurred with carriers of the disease in Brazil until 1979 mainly. In the State of Espírito Santo was built Dr. Pedro Fontes Hospital, also known as Colony of Itanhenga, which was opened in 1937. That Colony Hospital worked for several decades as a place of compulsory isolation of leprosy patients. We show the vision of former leprosy patients and former staffs of Dr. Pedro Fontes Hospital, and former inmates of Alzira Bley Educational Establishment, a site dedicated to the segregation of children born from leprosy patients while hospitalized at Dr. Pedro Fontes Hospital. The article presents the theme to bring up the reflection about decisions made by the society that hurts the basic principles of human rights.