The Chinese Leprosy Service Association will host its 40th anniversary commemoration for the World Leprosy Day Concert. The concert will be held in the Holy Family Church, a Catholic Church in Taipei on January 29th.

Musicians led by Professor Zhong Zhiwang is schedule to deliver a performance involving a solo piano, bamboo flutes, and chorus. Through this time, the Chinese Leprosy Service Association hopes to instill hope for lepars with grace grace and truly good hearts.

Also attending this event is Father Hansong Gu, is a citizen of Austria. In 1975, he started a lifetime's worth of contribution to leprosy patients. For 35 years, he has been involved with aid-work interested in giving care to lepars. He openly encouraged people to attend the event."Let us together do a wonderful thing for God," he said.

Leprosy, a chronic skin disease, is still comon in tropical and subtropical regions. It is caused by the bacillus Mycobacterium lepra entering the skin. Symptoms associated with the disease include ulcers of the skin, bone, and viscera that leads to loss of sensation, paralysis, gangrene, and deformation.

Lepars are often shunned because of the leprosy's contagious nature. According to aid-workers, lepars often expressed a desire to be socially accepted, with many of having feelings of loneliness, isolation, depression, and emptiness.

In 1975, Father Gu saw his first leprosy patient. Taking pity, he has asked God to provide him ways from which to help lepars. "It is a pity for a person to get leprosy, he later said." Since then, Father Gu contributed his life and efforts in providing for the spiritual as well as physical needs of leprosy patients. He expressed hopes that through his prayers and sermons, leprosy patients will gain hope for living and respect from society.

Father Gu concluded that all people were created by God including leprosy patients -- therefore, deserving as much dignity and care as any person.

The Chinese Leprosy Service Association is one of many non-government organization working under the Christian faith. The association serves the needs of both domestic and foreign lepars through offering medical service, education, and welfare. The desire of the association is to not only provide lepars with physical needs, but also, more importantly, with spiritual needs.