Handbook of Welfare in China
Edited by Beatriz Carrillo, Johanna Hood and Paul Kadetz
Abstract
This chapter examines China’s leprosy control during the collective era (1950s–1978) into the 1980s. In this health campaign, China adopted a universal type of welfare that is usually considered to foster stigma reduction. However, leprosy-related stigma seemed to be long-lasting, and even expanded as a counter-effect of the campaign, which requires a reconsideration of the role of stigma in welfare-programme design. This chapter shows how different kinds of stigma, which haunted both leprosy sufferers and the politically disadvantaged doctors who treated the disease – underpinned the design and efficacy of this welfare programme. This case provides a lesson how a stigmatised disease indeed needs support but that, unless the patients’ participation in all aspects of welfare is normalised, a future without the stigma of leprosy will remain an elusive goal.
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