es and mucous membranes, resulting in the loss of fingers, toes and limbs and damage to eyes.
Fu Pochu used to work as a nurse at Nam Lang Hospital in Hong Kong. After a leg injury, she was given artificial hipbones in an operation and decided to retire in 1997.
Her first experience of leprosy came in a leper village in Panyu during a 2002 tour organised by the Hong Kong Medical Mobilization Corp, a registered non-profit charitable body.
Fu observed that people diagnosed with the disease were shunned by society and even their relatives abandoned them.
"Leprosy runs deep. It's not so difficult to cure the ulcers, but the wounds to the heart take a long time to heal," said Fu.
To her astonishment, none of the 30 or so leper villages she visited in Guangdong in 2002 had nurses. So she decided to settle down in the Tanshan Leper Rehabilitation Village where 102 patients live and where conditions are believed to be the poorest. Most people there are senior citizens.
There is one hospital in the village and Fu is the only nurse. A Christian, she tends to the lepers' ulcers and treats them as normal people.
She has organised entertainment activities at festive occasions such as mid-Autumn Festival and Christmas and distributed souvenirs bought in Hong Kong.
"I am here to treat their wounded hearts as well as their ulcers," said Fu, who spends four months a year in the leper village.
"It is necessary for us to give them more care and warmth so that they can feel human compassion before they die."
Fu's devotion has not only moved medical doctors working with the village hospital but also dispelled the phobia felt by healthy residents from nearby villages toward the leper colony.
Conditions at Tanshan Leper Rehab Village are improving. Houses have been built with government subsidies. Construction has started on a cement road linking the village
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