Stories from the UN Archive: Boris Karloff, leprosy and Nigeria

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Actor Boris Karloff.

Famous for his function within the movie adaptation of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, Mr. Karloff additionally acted in 130 films, taking part in, as he known as it, many “spine-chilling roles”.

Stepping out of these roles and into his “real self”, Mr. Karloff labored with UN Radio in 1959 to file a characteristic on how communities in Nigeria have been dealing with leprosy.

“If you still think that leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, leaves its victims greatly disfigured and dooms them to that condition, then you should have been with me in the rural clinic in Tiranka, in northern central Nigeria,” he mentioned, over the sound of drumming.

Today, leprosy nonetheless happens in about 120 nations, with greater than 200,000 circumstances reported annually.

It’s a preventable and curable illness in accordance with the World Health Organization (WHO) in its world technique to eradicate it.

Efforts are actually ongoing in each area of the world.

Listen to The Dance of New Life right here, a part of UN News’s sequence highlighting epic moments throughout the UN’s previous, cultivated from the UN Audiovisual Library’s 49,400 hours of video and 18,000 hours of audio recordings.

Leprosy prevention programmes are actually occurring worldwide, together with this faculty marketing campaign in Recife, Brazil. (file)