Yakusu | |
|---|---|
 Mission members in front of early hospital buildings, c. 1909 | |
  Yakusu | |
| Coordinates: 0°34′14″N25°01′23″E / 0.570609°N 25.023095°E | |
| Country |  DR Congo |
| Province | Tshopo |
| Time zone | UTC+2 (Central Africa Time) |
| Climate | Af |
Yakusu was a mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on the Congo River just west and downstream of Kisangani.
The Baptist Missionary Society mission was established between 1895 and 1896 at the highest navigable point of the Congo, just below the Stanley Falls. [1] The Stanley Falls zone consisted of strips of land 20 kilometres (12 mi) deep along both banks of the Congo between Stanley Falls and Isangi. It was declared a free trade zone, where the state abandoned its interests to private enterprise. [2] The people of the region included the Lokele, Turumbu, Bakumu, Wagenya, Bamanga and Tovoke. [3]
The mission embarked on a program of educating local people, who in turn became teachers in village schools. With high demand, often the education of the teachers had to be rushed. [4] By 1905 the mission had 3,200 pupils at 70 rural schools in the zone. Initially, the mission was on good terms with the authorities. However, as their influence grew there were rumours that the British planned to take over the region. In January 1907 the governor-general Albert Lantonnois ordered the district commissioner of the Orientale Province to take vigorous measures to counter the influence of the Protestants. [5]
A medical mission hospital was built at the Yakusu mission in 1920. The hospital was designed by architect Arnold Chesterman and was led by his brother Dr. Clement Clapton Chesterman. Dr. Chesterman developed a network of community clinics staffed by Congolese to address the epidemic of sleeping sickness. The mission treated numerous tropical diseases. In 1938 with the work of Stanley George Browne it became a leprosarium. [6]
During the colonial era from the 1930s to the 1960s Yakusu was a center of missionary and medical activity. [7] Nurses were trained as both evangelists and health assistants. In the early 1930s the local Mbole people began to be pressed into working on plantations and building roads. The Yakusu doctors were no longer allowed to use porters, and instead took to motorbikes, while the nurses used bicycles. [8] There was a leprosarium across the river at Yalisombo. [7]
The film The Nun's story starring Audrey Hepburn was partially shot at Yakusu in 1958. [7]
David Livingstone was a Scottish physician, Congregationalist, and pioneer Christian missionary with the London Missionary Society, an explorer in Africa, who wanted to abolish slavery, and one of the most popular British heroes of the late 19th-century Victorian era. David was the husband of Mary Moffat Livingstone, from the prominent 18th-century missionary family, Moffat. Livingstone had a mythic status that operated on a number of interconnected levels: Protestant missionary martyr, working-class "rags-to-riches" inspirational story, scientific investigator and explorer, imperial reformer, anti-slavery crusader, and advocate of British commercial and colonial expansion.
A leper colony, also known by many other names, is an isolated community for the quarantining and treatment of lepers, people suffering from leprosy. M. leprae, the bacterium responsible for leprosy, is believed to have spread from East Africa through the Middle East, Europe, and Asia by the 5th century before reaching the rest of the world more recently. Historically, leprosy was believed to be extremely contagious and divinely ordained, leading to enormous stigma against its sufferers. Other severe skin diseases were frequently conflated with leprosy and all such sufferers were kept away from the general public, although some religious orders provided medical care and treatment. Recent research has shown M. leprae has maintained a similarly virulent genome over at least the last thousand years, leaving it unclear which precise factors led to leprosy's near elimination in Europe by 1700. A growing number of cases following the first wave of European colonization, however, led to increased attention towards leprosy during the New Imperialism of the late 19th century. Following G.A. Hansen's discovery of the role of M. leprae in the disease, the First International Leprosy Conference held in Berlin in 1897 renewed interest and investment in the isolation of lepers throughout the European colonial empires. Although Western countries now generally treat cases of leprosy individually on an outpatient basis, traditional isolated colonies continue to exist in India, China, and some other countries.
BMS World Mission is a Christian missionary society founded by Baptists from England in 1792. It was originally called the Particular Baptist Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Amongst the Heathen, but for most of its life was known as the Baptist Missionary Society. The headquarters is in Didcot, England.
Peel Island is a small heritage-listed island located in Moreton Bay, east of Brisbane, in South East Queensland, Australia. The island is a locality within the local government area of Redland City and a national park. In the 2016 census, Peel Island had a population of 0 people.
Katharine, Lady Cook was a British medical missionary who worked in Uganda. She co-founded the Church Missionary Society Hospital at Mengo, which opened in May 1897, and served as its matron until 1911. In 1918, she began training midwives via the Maternity Training School in Namirembe, which she founded. She later became consulting physician to the Government European Hospital in Kampala.
Leprosy stigma is a type of social stigma, a strong negative feeling towards a person with leprosy relating to their moral status in society. It is also referred to as leprosy-related stigma, leprostigma, and stigma of leprosy. Since ancient times, leprosy instilled the practice of fear and avoidance in many societies because of the associated physical disfigurement and lack of understanding behind its cause. Because of the historical trauma the word "leprosy" invokes, the disease is now referred to as Hansen's disease, named after Gerhard Armauer Hansen who discovered Mycobacterium leprae, the bacterial agent that causes Hansen's disease. Those who have suffered from Hansen's disease describe the impact of social stigma as far worse than the physical manifestations despite it being only mildly contagious and pharmacologically curable. This sentiment is echoed by Weis and Ramakrishna, who noted that "the impact of the meaning of the disease may be a greater source of suffering than symptoms of the disease".
As of 2009, 2,600 former leprosy patients were living in 13 national sanatoriums and 2 private hospitals in Japan. Their mean age is 80. There were no newly diagnosed Japanese leprosy patients in 2005, but one in 2006, and one in 2007.
Tairoin Hospital is a hospital for leprosy patients initiated by Jean Marie Corre (1850–1911) in Shimasaki Machi Kumamoto shi, Kumamoto Prefecture, Japan, in 1898, initially hospitalizing patients who gathered around Honmyoji Temple. He was a member of M.E.P. or "Missions Etrangères de Paris". The hospital started with the arrival of 5 sisters from the "Franciscan Missionaries of Mary" in 1898. The name of the hospital was changed to Biwazaki Tairo Hospital in 1952, and then to Tairo Clinic in 1996. The number of in-patients was 121 in 1948, and was 8 in 2008.
Wayne Marvin Meyers was an American physician, microbiologist, chemist, humanitarian, and medical missionary. He pioneered new medical techniques, discovered new infectious agents, and trained countless researchers and scientists. Meyers was particularly well known for his work with Hansen's disease (Leprosy), Buruli ulcer, and filarial diseases.
Kalene Hill is a community in the northwest of Zambia near a hill by the same name about 3 kilometres (2 mi) to the southeast. It is part of the Ikelenge District. Kalene Hill was the site of an early medical mission. The hospital is still important to the region.
The Yellala Falls are a series of waterfalls and rapids on the Congo River just upstream from Matadi in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The falls are the lowest of a long series of rapids that render the river unnavigable, forcing colonial explorers to travel by foot as far as the Stanley Pool 350 kilometres (220 mi) upstream. The Congo is the second largest river in the world by volume of water discharged, and the deepest in the world. The section of river that ends with the Yellala falls has over 300 species of fish, many found nowhere else.
Although leprosy, or Hansen's Disease, was never an epidemic in The United States, cases of leprosy have been reported in Louisiana as early as the 18th century. The first leprosarium in the continental United States existed in Carville, Louisiana from 1894-1999 and Baton Rouge, Louisiana is the home of the only institution in the United States that is exclusively devoted to leprosy consulting, research, and training.
Arthur Lewis Piper was a medical missionary in the Belgian Congo, supported by the Detroit Epworth League. He worked for the Mission Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the most remote mission station near Kapanga in the Belgian Congo. Piper helped the Lunda tribe battle malaria, sleeping sickness, and leprosy, among many other diseases.
Stanley George Browne, also called "Bonganga" by the community members with whom he worked, was a British medical missionary and leprologist known for his work and his many research achievements throughout the 20th century in the Belgian Congo, Nigeria, and India including his early use of Dapsone. He received numerous awards throughout his academic and professional career. He is also known as an academic for his early publications surrounding his findings of leprosy of which he published about 150 articles and five books.
Isabella Kerr was a Scottish medical missionary who worked in India in the early 20th-century. She created the Victoria Leprosy Centre in Hyderabad. She worked to cure leprosy in India.
Clement Clapton Chesterman OBE was an English writer, humanitarian and physician. He was a medical missionary for the Baptist Missionary Society that served in the Belgian Congo, more specifically Yakusu. He was responsible for the establishment of a hospital, community-based dispensaries and training centres of medical auxiliaries. Chesterman's network of health dispensaries employed preventive medicine using the new drug tryparsamide to combat the prevalent issue of sleeping sickness in the area. His implementation of mass chemotherapy was extremely successful in eliminating the disease. Such success led to his methods being widely adopted in Africa, making Chesterman a prominent contributor to the field of tropical medicine. In 1974 he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth.
Dr Ernest Woodward Price MD, FRCSE, DTM&H, OBE was a missionary doctor, orthopaedic surgeon, leprosy specialist and the discoverer of podoconiosis, one of the neglected tropical diseases. A list of his publications is available online.
Nora Neve (1873-1952) was a British nurse and medical missionary with the Church Missionary Society who pioneered missionary nursing. Her work was instrumental in the development of the Kashmir Mission Hospital in Srinagar. She was the hospital's first Superintendent of Nursing and led education and cleanliness initiatives. Neve also recorded and published records of Kashmiri hospital practices in the American Journal of Nursing, contributing to the tool kits of other missionaries and preserving a part of Kashmir's cultural history.
Josefina Guerrero was a Filipina spy during World War II. Guerrero had leprosy and was an unsuspicious and effective surveillance asset for American allied forces.
Ernest Muir FRCS, CIE, CMG was a Scottish medical missionary and educator in British-controlled India and Nigeria most noted for his work with Hansen's disease (leprosy).