In the 1930s, Japan found itself battling against the spread of leprosy. Faced with the infectious disease, which attacks the nerves and deforms the body, the authorities confined leprosy patients to sanatoriums – some of them on the island of Nagashima. Even after the first treatments appeared in the late 1940s, it would take until 1996 for the government to end the forced confinement of patients who had in fact been cured for decades.
It’s now been 30 years since Japan’s policy of forced quarantine was abolished. The surviving former patients are all very elderly. FRANCE 24’s Alexis Bregere, Mélodie Sforza and Ayana Nishikawa had the rare opportunity to meet one of them, who still lives on Nagashima.