Leprosy is one of the most neglected diseases, and today it affects  millions of people principally in Africa, Asia and South America.

Unlike other terrible illness, like AIDS, cholera or malaria, ONG and media, which should care of lepers' health, don't fight the Henses diseases adequately (this is the scientific name inherited from its discoverer). 

Since 1998, I have been trying to understand why lepers are so discriminated, but, against my will, I'm not able to find any logical explanation. 

Don’t they suffer like others? Are there first-class ill people and second-class one? Is it too unpleasant to look at them? Maybe, do they conjure in our mind terrible figures and the sound of plague-spreaders' bells? Nowdays, are we able to accept the existence of leprosy?  

I'm a photoreporter and my objective is to stir up everybody’s coscience, using photos (not touched up by computers but ghastly true) like a provocative tool. It's extremely selfish to remain silent in order not to stir up indifferent coscience of thousands of people.

I've lived with them for many years, documenting in the first person all the atrocious reality they have to bear and face.

One day, a seriously ill Senegalese woman asked me: "Sir, why have we been forgotent and abandoned here, far from our villages?"  Now that woman is dead and still today I haven't got an answer.

Again: today, there are millions of lepers.

Maurizio Faraboni