2024-01-28 06:05:01
Sunday, January 28, 2024, is International Leprosy Day. Every year, 200,000 new cases appear worldwide in some 145 countries. Michel-Yves Grauwin, an orthopedic surgeon from Lille, spent more than ten years in Africa preventing, informing, training and operating against leprosy. At 74, he has just finished his career at the Lille University Hospital and looks back on his fight against leprosy.
At the end of his medical training, in the mid-1970s, Michel-Yves Grauwin quickly knew where he wanted to go. Two adventurers helped him in this orientation: Paul Grauwin, his cousin in his sixties who, as a doctor, had treated in former French Indochina during the war, and the dashing Bernard Kouchner, the French doctor, who wanted to hiring Michel-Yves from their first meeting, when the latter had not yet graduated.
If Michel-Yves says ‘no’, it doesn’t matter, it was just postponed: the young doctor has desires elsewhere to practice his profession, but he wants to do that after having completed his training as a surgeon . Diploma obtained, will follow Iran, at 30 years old and the Philippines, in times of war or not, then the discovery of leprosy on the African continent.
Coming from a family of lawyers, the man lets himself be guided by his heart: thus his choice to become a doctor was as simple as “evidence“. His father will ask him to “s’installer” once he obtains his surgeon’s diploma but will finally accept the missions in Africa for which the son opts.
A hand operation for a leprosy patient. • © Raoul Follereau Foundation
Each time, a leitmotif, “as cousin Paul said: ‘go where you have to go, don’t let yourself be guided.’ The desire to discover, a kind of calling, led him to Burkina Faso, then to Mali where he discovered leprosy, “a second pot” in which it is built. Passionate, he “teaches, trains, operates, carries out public health”. “Touch all”, he is aware of having found his way. If he gets a reputation as a doctor who does not want to operate, it is because he focuses his fight against illness on prevention.
Leprosy, perhaps benign, if detected early. It manifests itself as spots on the skin which must be treated with three antibiotics for a year. But if we do not pay attention, the leprosy bacillus settles in the peripheral nerve which causes insensitivity and paralysis of the extremities, eyes, hands and feet – this can lead to sores or even injuries. amputations.
However, humanity, the strength shown by certain patients are lessons for him, sources of inspiration. He remembers a mother, her baby in her arms: “This woman is there with her claws instead of hands, non-functional, with this form of serenity, calm and that gives us strength and courage… Encounters like this build, strengthen, enrich “.
The Raoul Follereau Foundation named after the eponymous journalist and writer was created in 1943. In 1954, he launched the first edition of a world day for leprosy patients with a double objective: “to ensure that all people suffering from leprosy are considered and cared for like any other sick person; fight against discrimination and the sometimes criminal fear that this disease generates. This call came to fruition through the actions carried out and supported internationally by the Raoul Follereau Foundation, whose founder contributed, for 70 years, to curing 16 million sick people.
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