STAFF PHOTO BILL ROBERS
Aurora resident John Clement has travelled the world helping people battling leprosy.
Aurora
August 26, 2008 09:55 AM
Aurora man leads leprosy fight
By: Patrick Mangion, Staff Writer
Restoring lives.
As simple as it is inspiring, a Margaret Mead quote has become a rallying cry for change.
John Clement was conducting research at the University of Rochester during the mid-1970s when Ms Mead uttered her exalted words: “A small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
It is displayed on the fridge in Mr. Clement’s Aurora home as a testament to his way of life.
He has served as chairperson of The Leprosy Mission International for the past five years, during which time he helped guide a charity spreading hope and awareness to poverty stricken countries.
The 62-year-old New Zealand native has juggled those responsibilities with tireless community volunteerism.
“Caring for the world is a critical challenge and we must balance thinking globally with acting locally,” Mr. Clement said.
“An important part of each person is what they contribute to others and to society.”
That philosophy was instilled in him as a young boy. His father was minister at a Methodist church in Auckland and philanthropy became part of day-to-day life in the New Zealand capital.
In fact, good work in the Clement family can be traced back to Mr. Clement’s grandfather who billeted a mission rider who travelled the world on horseback to raise awareness and funding for leprosy.
As the third generation member of his family to take up the cause, for better or worse, much has changed with the disease in that time.
There are still 300,000 known cases each year.
While that number has declined dramatically since medical advances during the 1980s made it a treatable disease, leprosy pervades areas of abject poverty and subjects its victims to crushing social stigma and alienation, Mr. Clement said.
That reality presented itself when he travelled with an international leprosy team to New Delhi, India and shook the clawed hand of a man living with leprosy.
“You see the person, instead of seeing the damage,” he said.
He has travelled to leprosy’s front lines, including three visits to India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Africa, from where he has heart-wrenching stories.
There was the Bangladesh family where two children with leprosy fled during the night because they feared their family would be ostracized by their disease.
But there have been illuminating stories such as a Thai man who was kicked out of school in Grade 2, banished from his community and forced to live in the forest and live off the land.
“He refused to be pushed out of society,” Mr. Clement recalled.
The man is a self-taught gardener and travels extensively to lecture about sustainable organic gardening.
The organization’s Leprosy Mission Hospitals are staffed by specialists who deal with the ravaging results of leprosy, including eye surgeons and doctors equipped to deal with hand and leg injuries.
Patients can often be cured in six months to two years. When they are released from hospital, the leprosy mission provides them with a means of self-sufficiency.
It is often as simple as presenting them with two goats for breeding, a pregnant cow to start a farm or even a cellphone so the person can become the village phone booth and turn it into a business.
However, diminished need has led to the closure of several of the mission’s hospitals, Mr. Clement said.
Instead, those medical specialists now treat the general public in areas once fraught with leprosy.
The unfortunate consequence of stamping out widespread leprosy has seen its place put on the global backburner of human depravity, behind maladies such as AIDS and malaria.
“That’s one barrier. There is still this perception that leprosy is not a factor.
“Two years ago, we considered teaming with an AIDS or tuberculosis charity, but we decided it was better to stay the course,” said Mr. Clement, who’s altruism reaches around the corner from his home as much as it reaches acrosss the world.
He and his wife, Irene, moved to Aurora in 1977. They met at the University of Calgary shortly after Mr. Clement graduated from the University of Auckland’s chemistry program.
As part of his post-graduate studies, he taught undergraduate science where he met his wife.
“There was no dating until she passed,” he joked.
They have two children in their 20s and now run their own consulting business, providing regulatory and managerial services to companies in the biosciences.
They use the term retired, loosely, counting travel and sailing among their favourite pastimes.
The couple actively support Aurora’s arboretum, the town’s leisure services committees and Aurora United Church, where Mr. Clement sings in the choir.
“It’s a privilege to try to change the future for people faced with problems,” he said.
For more information, visit www.leprosy.ca