Abu Zaabal, Egypt’s Lingering Leper Colony

The leprosaria Abu Zaabal is located north of Cairo and south of Alexandria in the lush,

fertile region of the Nile Delta’s Qalyubia Governorate. This leper colony was built in 1933,

when those suffering from leprosy, or Hansen’s Disease, were brought here—sometimes forcibly

by police—to live their lives away from society. Today about 750 people living with leprosy

remain here at Abu Zaabal, while another five thousand cured lepers live nearby in the village of

Abdel Menem Riyadh. The disease is not hereditary, and the children of cured lepers do not fear

catching the disease.

Although Abu Zaabal had fallen into serious disrepair from neglect, the last decade has

seen refurbishment from institutional donors like Caritas Egypt and independent patrons. The

leprosaria today provides humanistic amenities we take for granted in the developed world, like a

laundromat, library, school, mosque, kitchen and a barber. There is even a prison on the grounds,

for incarcerated lepers—the isolation and destruction of the untreated symptoms sometimes

engender depression, self-loathing and anti-social behaviours. Cognitive Behavioural Therapy is

recommended as tandem treatment with the tablets that stop physical symptoms.

The patients living in Abu Zaabal span a continuum of symptoms, with some people bed-

ridden and blinded, while others whom have lost limbs still remain ambulatory. Given the chance

to return to their rural communities today, these lepers prefer to stay here. The social stigma of

leprosy remains equally crippling outside their gated-community.

Many people have been at Abu Zaabal for decades, and know no other way of life outside

the colony. Understandably, any moves toward dismantling the leprosaria have been met with
great resistance from its denizens, whom, really have nowhere else to go. The grotesque

deformations associated with leprosy still create fear among the general public—many

uneducated people still think the disease is God’s Curse.

And although many of the menial jobs on the grounds carry token wages—the patients

often crippled with amputations prohibitive of meaningful work—these lepers are allowed a

sense of self-worth by tending to the grounds, which are meticulously cared for.

There have been significant advancements in treating this disfiguring, crippling and

feared disease, a disease known in the Abrahamic religions, which have virtually eradicated

leprosy with the advent of multi-drug therapy (MDT) in the early 1980s. Only a few other

developing countries continue to grapple with the societal effects of leprosy, like China, Brazil

and India: there is a leprosaria not far from Juba, South Sudan, near the Ugandan border.

Leprosy patients receive medicine free of charge, provided by the World Health Organization

(WHO), as part of the WHO’s mandate to eliminate the grotesque disease.

Willows is a contributing writer to the Egyptian Gazette and the Egyptian Mail. He attended the
American University in Cairo and now lives in Toronto.