St. Christopher, Fort Worth: Hopewallah's Commitment to India

Leprosy and references to it are mentioned 68 times in the Bible, with it usually being associated with having sinned or being cursed. According to the World Health Organization, leprosy is one of “the oldest diseases ever recorded with the first cases dating back to almost 600 B.C.”

While a cure has existed since 1940, the fear and stigma associated with the disease, also called Hansen’s disease, proves harder to cure.

One Episcopal congregation in Fort Worth is doing what it can to help those afflicted by the disease and its stigma. Through the decades-long work of parishioner Dr. Anantha (Andy) Babbili and his family, the congregation has learned how some communities across the world continue to require infected people to live in quarantine sites often called “leper colonies.” About 750 such colonies currently exist in India, with an estimated 200,000 people afficted, including children.

Babbili’s father, the Rt. Rev. Babbili Prabhudas, first Bishop of Diocese of Karimnager in the Church of South India and his late wife Sarah Prabhudas dedicated their lives to providing the spiritual, medical, social, and domestic needs of hundreds of lepers, families, and neighbors residing in a leper colony at Borabanda, Parvathnager, Hyderabad, India.

Prabhudas died in 1996, but Babbili has carried on his father’s work through the non-profit charity Hopewallah, a medical mission.

The Hopewallah website says: “People who contract leprosy are affected both physically and socially. This disease has been around since Biblical times and the myths, fear and stigma surrounding it remain strong. From small children to older adults, people with leprosy are ostracized, shamed, and forced out of their communities and homes. The person with the disease is usually so humiliated and frightened they go into hiding, failing to get treatment as the disease worsens.”

One reason leprosy persists in India and other places is that it is largely a disease of the poor. Funding for innovative research to produce a vaccine tends to be concentrated in high-income nations where leprosy is rare if nonexistent. The result is that finding a vaccine for leprosy drops to the bottom of priorities for pharma companies. Add to this the fact that resistance to already existing drugs for treating leprosy appears to be rising so the stage is set for a continued and growing need for ministering to lepers.

St. Christopher is doing its part. The congregation raises money annually to send medical supplies and to fund the work of Babbili and his wife Latha. The Babbilis travel to India every year to provide treatment to members of leper colonies around Hyderabad. On this year’s trip, Babbili and his team of four physicians, a dentist, an optometrist, six paramedics, two clerks, one manager, two drivers, and one mobile medical van driver tended to more than 3,450 patients.

So many specialists are needed because leprosy is caused by a type of bacteria called mycobacterium leprae that affects the skin, peripheral nerves, eyes, as well as the upper respiratory tract mucosa. If the disease is not treated in a timely manner, it can lead to blindness, paralysis, the crippling of the feet and hands, permanent disability, and disfigurement.

Medical care is not the only thing the Babbilis deliver. With love and respect as well as medicine, they and their team work to ease both the physical and the emotional pain of their patients. In doing so, they are following the example of Jesus, who treated lepers and other outcasts with compassion, touching and healing.