Going home
p. 46 · Read in the full issue
Mother Blanche, head of the nursing staff at Ducos Hansen sanatorium in New Caledonia, who is a mem ber of the Catholic Sisters of St. Joseph de Cluny, is headed for France on holiday and to seek medical treatment.
It’s 14 years since Mother Blanche last visited France and it will be only the third time during her 48 years service at Ducos. There have been canonisations for less!
In comparison with other diseases, treatment for Han sen’s disease has seen little progress. A non - medical supervisor of Ducos Sanatorium some years ago went on record as saying that one of the reasons for lack of progress in treatment was that the disease was not a “commercial” one.
That’s to say, it did not im mobilise a great number of people as heart diseases and TB do. Thus funds were not forth coming for the concentrated research into leprosy as for the more “popular” diseases.