Nobody, nowadays, would like to hear the word “leprosy”. Health professionals, at hospital, use the name of the disease so that it would not have a negative impact on the lay people listening in instead of the word “leper”. Hansen’s disease softens the blow or tone of the disease, so to speak, and the work is then carried on with their assessment or treatment.
Albert Camus wrote the novel The Plague about cholera even though I always associated it with leprosy. With all its misery, the story also delves into a friendly friendship that developed between a medical officer and a clerk at the hospital. To compare and contrast the misery that was taking place in the hospital, these friends go for a swim together at night to escape the horrendous environment they were living in. One has to read it to understand the absurd and existentialist philosophy.
When I hear the words L-Isptar Lazzaretto, I automatically think and make the association with leprosy – the lepers. I also think of all the souls that had died there, the mourning that the patients’ relatives experienced. In addition, the pain of the patients’ dying and the sorrow they experienced throughout their lives knowing that there was no cure for their leprotic disease. All this takes me to what is going on at present on Manoel Island.
It has been planned and agreed, between the government and MIDI that the Manoel Island project exchanges the labour for the restoration of Fort Manoel with that of Lazaretto Hospital. However, the catch in all this is that Lazaretto Hospital is going to be converted into a casino for private entrepreneurs, basically for a giveaway. Absurd or existentialist? Is this how our politicians have started thinking – without any measure for value? Is it right to think like this or is there something wrong? Is it purely money that drives our lives or the story that we can narrate to our children and their children?
As Gżira local council candidate for Alternattiva Demokratika – The Green Party I ask whether it would be morally right if we had to have a casino, for the bereft of a few gamblers where this old and historic place still stands? Couldn’t this part of our history be passed on to our children and remind us all of the difficult past we all had experienced? Is it morally right to convert this place into a casino? Other than the moral factor, isn’t this old and historical place one of our national treasures? Alternattiva believes that Lazzaretto should be restored to its former glory for the whole nation as it is one of our remaining jewels, and converted into a medical museum.