Nobody thought it would work. Padma Venkataraman, in New Delhi on business for the United Nations, wanted to do something more than just hand out rupees to the disfigured beggars with leprosy. She wanted to give them microloans to start their own businesses\u2014something no bank or charity had ever attempted. Critics said the \u201cuntouchables\u201d in India\u2019s 700 leprosy colonies would not be able to exchange a lifetime of begging for work, let alone be able to repay loans. They also asked who would be willing to do business with leprosy patients in a country where people consider the disease to be a curse. Although the World Health Organization (WHO) deemed leprosy an \u201celiminated health problem\u201d in 2000 because its prevalence had dropped to less than one case per 10,000, an estimated 12 million people in India are still suffering from the disease. For them, poverty and social stigma block their access to the free drug therapies that can cure leprosy, which is caused by a bacterium and damages skin, nerves, the upper respiratory tract, and eyes. Following rejection by families and coworkers, many people with leprosy band together in colonies centered in five southern Indian states. That\u2019s where Venkataraman, the\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Nobody thought it would work. Padma Venkataraman, in New Delhi on business for the United Nations, wanted to do something more than just hand out rupees to the disfigured beggars with leprosy. She wanted to give them microloans to start their own businesses\u2014something no bank or charity had ever attempted. Critics said the \u201cuntouchables\u201d in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5913,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-579304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5913"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579304\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}