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Vital Seed worked with a local Christian charity called Karuna Leprosy Ministry and funded the purchase of farm land for a stainable source of work and a home for leprosy afflicted families. The home comprises 10 acres of land for goat and Jatropha bean farming.
Our
The Abundance Project as it is now called, is part of the wider Karuna project to give employment to the leprosy affected and in the long run fund the activities of the Karuna project. The purpose of the project is to provide employment and income generation to leprosy affected people residing at the Gandhi Leprosy Colony through jatropha cultivation & animal husbandry. This is in keeping with the aims and vision of Karuna, which is:
10 acres of agricultural land has been bought by the Karuna Trust. On 8 acres of this land Jatropha will be cultivated and vegetables will be cultivated on the rest of the land. Also a shed has been erected to house 100 goats.
Jatropha (see below for more details) is a recent bio-fuel plant and is considered by some to be a crop for the future as it does not impact the food chain since it is inedible to man or animal and uses poor land. The seeds obtained from the Jatropha fruit are as big as coffee beans and are crushed to extract oil which is used in the production of Bio-diesel.
Goats will be breed for milk and meat.
Leprosy in India:
The Indian government has launched many leprosy eradication programs, and has in fact reached its goal of reaching the WHO elimination standards in 2005. There are still cases of leprosy that occur everyday. However the incidence is on decline as the leprosy prevalence rate has decreased from 4.6/10,000 population in 1996 to 0.82/10,000 in July 2006. India still accounts for 54% of the world's new cases of Leprosy
Leprosy is not a flesh eating disease:
Leprosy is an infectious disease that is neither hereditary nor flesh eating. Leprosy is not a disease of the past but is still highly prevalent affecting hundreds of thousands of people around the world, mainly in Asia, South America and Africa. Leprosy is caused by a germ called Mycobacterium leprae (which is closely related to the germ that causes tuberculosis). It is largely spread by airborne infection i.e. coughing and sneezing. The first outward sign of leprosy is, quite often, a patch on the skin, sometimes associated with loss of feeling. Although leprosy is often considered a skin disease, it really is a generalized disease affecting many systems. The skin and nerve involvement produce most of the problems. Leprosy damages nerves in the hands, feet and face affecting muscle function and sensation which leads to tissue damage, ulcers and deformity. Medical and lifestyle interventions are essential to prevent disability of hands and feet and blindness.
Leprosy can be cured!
Leprosy is completely curable. However until the 1940s, there was no effective cure for leprosy. Today, with Multi Drug Therapy (MDT), which involves using three drugs – Dapsone, Rifampicin, and Clofazimine, leprosy can be easily cured in 6 - 24 months. Just one dose of MDT reduces the infectivity of the disease by more than 90 %. MDT renders even the most severe cases non-infectious within 48 hours of treatment.
Social boycott of the patient does not help eliminate the disease:
Leprosy though a communicable disease, only spreads through droplet infection (similar to the way TB spreads by coughing/sneezing) and intimate personal contact with a person who is not taking treatment. Social boycott is not the solution; it will only serve to increase the stigma associated with the disease and its deformities.
Leprosy does not only affect poor people:
Anyone can be infected by leprosy if they are susceptible and exposed to the right dose of the bacteria. Poverty has as much to do with the incidence of leprosy as it does with most other public health problems. Leprosy usually affects the lower socioeconomic groups as they possess low body immunity and seldom have access to healthy food, adequate sanitation and basic medical care. back to the top
Leprosy is not extremely contagious:
It is estimated that more than 90 per cent of the world’s population possesses total natural immunity to leprosy. Leprosy is not very contagious and is usually spread by droplets, so coming in contact with the body fluids of someone who has the active disease, can cause infection. It usually affects those who have low body immunity. In no way, however, is transmission as easy as most people believe.
Leprosy is not hereditary:
Leprosy tends to occur within families, and in the past this led many people to think that it was hereditary. However, in reality, leprosy is not hereditary; it is a bacterial infection similar to any other infection. However due to a higher chance of close contact and also the same precipitating factors, leprosy tends to occur in families, but only a small proportion of family members contract the disease.
Leprosy is not related to eating certain kinds of food:
The bacteria causing leprosy, Mycobacterium leprae, is not a food-borne bacteria. The primary modes of transmission of leprosy are prolonged close contact and transmission by nasal droplets. Therefore, food has no relation to the spread of leprosy. However, poor eating and malnutrition can make a person susceptible to the disease.
Leprosy is not a venereal disease:
Due to the fact that leprosy is spread through intimate body contact and tends to occur within families it was believed that leprosy is a sexually transmitted disease. However, in reality, leprosy can spread without sexual contact and through droplet infection.
The following contributed to these facts:
Jayant Datt, AGM (Community Service), Tata Motors. Tata Motors supports Nav Jagrat Manav Samaj, an NGO dealing with leprosy in Jamshedpur .
Dr Aparatim Goel, non-surgical consultant dermatologist.
(Some of this information is taken from Eco-Geek)
Despite the unpopularity of using most crops for bio fuel sources, jatropha, an inedible plant, is getting a boost in popularity. The oily seeds of the bushy plant are used to create bio diesel, and nearly 2.5 million acres have been planted so far in India, one of the world’s largest producers. In fact, it is one of the most popular bio diesel crops around because harvesters can get a large output of oil from the seeds (producing four times as much fuel as soy, and 10 times as much as corn) while needing to put in only minimal care and resources for growth. Hindustan Petroleum and Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Agency plan to boost that by planting about 37,000 more acres on wastelands in India.
Hindustan Petroleum will refine the seeds from the harvest into bio diesel to sell across the state of Chhattisgarh. Jatropha is intriguing for bio diesel production because the plant grows in areas where edible crops fear to tread, so it is supposedly a non-competitor for farm land.
Jatropha cultivation – like most crops for bio fuel and bio diesel – isn't always benign to food crops since if left unregulated, farmers who may get more for a crop of jatropha seeds than another food crop, will be tempted to do so. But for our project this is the best source of income for the leprosy families. Also our land is not suitable for arable farming.
Thenergo, a Belgian developer and operator of decentralized sustainable energy projects using biomass, bio gas, bio-oil and co generation has announced that it has commenced development of a 9MWe, 6MWth CHP bio-oil to energy plant in Merksplas (Belgium).
The project, named Greenpower, representing a total investment of €11 million will run on bio-oil extracted from the seeds of the jatropha plant (previous post). The jatropha seeds are a non-edible, high energy fruit grown on semi-arid or waste land in South East Asia.
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