Hidden Lives

When we first visited Ritu at home her, she peered at us through a hole in the wall of her house, too shy to come out to meet the strangers who had turned up in her village.  Ritu grew up in a community where men and women have set roles, where reputation is linked to how well each performances their roles. When disease strikes, it threatens to  destroy their reputations.

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At 12 years old, Rina had never heard of leprosy when she was diagnosed with it.  Diagnosis is a complicated process and the medical journey to a cure takes a long time.  Rina was simply happy to take the medication without really knowing what the disease was about.  Is it better to know or not know about the disease you have?

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13 year old Rhitik found a small cut on his big toe.  He thought nothing of this, expecting it will heal soon.  But 6 months later, the wound hadn't healed.  Instead it had gotten bigger, an infection had set in and soon the infection had gone right down to the bone.  His doctors had no idea what was happening.

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When her father passed away, Aarati's mum worked hard to keep Aarati and her brother at school but financial pressures mean that Aarati had to drop out of school to support the family.  Now at 16 years old, Aarati has a chance to go back to school.  She wants to pick up where she left off in Year 6 and even though she's older now, her determination has not left her and she still has big dreams.

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Born into a farming family, 40 year old Durga learnt how to farm the land and grow her own food.  However, when she was 7 years old, she started to lose strength in her legs and small tumors started to grow all over her body.  

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Down many bumpy dirt roads and fields of wheat, a long way from the nearest town, at just 20 years old, Rupa has started a successful small business, but life has never been easy.  As a child, Rupa developed a condition that made her look different to other people.  Her relatives told her that nobody would ever want to marry her.

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When Saru received a late diagnosis of leprosy, her fingers had already started to become deformed.  She became very self conscious about her looks, unsure about herself and isolated herself in her home.  She needed encouragement and work to regain her confidence.

But a self-help group and the gift of a little piglet turned that all around for her.

How did a self-help group and a simple gift of a little piglet transform Saru into a busy business women, a confident disability advocate and a leader in her local community?

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20 year old Rubina worked on a tea plantation plucking tea leaves to earn money to contribute to her large family consisting of her mother, father and 7 siblings.

When a side of her face started to swell, droop, become paralysed and her eye couldn't close properly, Rubina was terrified.  She didn't understand why this was happening to her and she was scared to let other people see her face like that.

How can she go to work? 
But more importantly, who would want to marry her with her face like this?

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Ubed strongly believed in the power of traditional healings.  When he started to see patches on his skin and felt tingling sensations over his body, naturally, he went to see a traditional healer to ask for help to remove the evil spirit plaguing his body.  When this failed, Ubed didn't know who to turn to next.

But one time, on a night out, Ubed saw a movie that changed his whole life.

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17 year old Noor is from a close knit community.  Several years ago, she stepped on a nail whilst playing at school.  The wound never healed, growing increasingly deep and infected, causing Noor to drop out of school when the smell became too much.  This wound turned out to be the catalyst for a long, confusing journey for Noor and her family, as they sought treatment from large medical centres, whilst trying to find enough money to pay for expensive treatments and juggling the pressures from their community.
But all along, the cure was just up the road from their home, in the small local health clinic and best of all, it was free.

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