Tangerang (Indonesia) (AFP) – Ali Saga, a former leprosy patient, remembers one of the most devastating moments of his life when he visited a health clinic in Indonesian capital Jakarta. “I looked like a zombie,” he says. “‘Stand back! this person is a leper, be careful!’ I couldn’t believe it’s the doctor saying that.” Now he is using his pain to help other residents of a village on the outskirts of the capital to live a normal life after leprosy with hand-crafted prosthetic limbs. After Brazil and India, Indonesia has the world’s third-highest cases of leprosy — a contagious bacterial disease transmitted by prolonged close contact with untreated cases.
