1. Frans Hemerijckx was a Flemish leprologist, humanist and the founder of the Damien Foundation in Belgium, a non profit non governmental organization engaged in providing treatment and rehabilitation services to people afflicted with leprosy.
14 Facts About Frans Hemerijckx
1. 2.
Frans Hemerijckx spent most of his life in the treatment and rehabilitation of leprosy patients and initiated a mobile leprosy treatment methodology, Clinic under the trees.
3.
On 13 September 1975, Government of Belgium honoured Hemerijckx by issuing a commemorative stamp, depicting his image.
4.
Frans Hemerijckx was born on 18 August 1902 at Ninove in the Flemish province of Belgium to Leonie Steenhoudt and Theofiel Hemerijckx, a candle manufacturer, as the eldest of their four children.
5.
Frans Hemerijckx did his early education at St Catherine's College, Geraardsbergen and secured a medical degree from the Catholic University of Leuven after which he specialized in tropical medicine at Brussels.
6.
Frans Hemerijckx's career started in 1929 when he was sent to Kasai, a leprosy endemic region in Belgian Congo.
7.
Frans Hemerijckx started an ambulatory service in the region for wider coverage and started using the then newly discovered sulpha drugs such as Dapsone and opened another leprosy centre at Dikungu.
8.
Frans Hemerijckx stayed in Congo for 25 years and by the time he returned to Belgium, the centre he had founded at Tshumbe had grown to be largest in the country.
9.
Frans Hemerijckx accepted the offer and persuaded Claire Vellut, another Belgian physician, to accompany him to India where the duo established a leprosy centre at Polambakkam, a small village with high concentration of leprosy patients, near Kancheepuram in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu on 9 July 1955.
10.
Frans Hemerijckx carried on with the mobile service for five years till the local government took over the system in 1960, placing it under Claire Vellut.
11.
Obbels and Jacques Vellut started the forum, Friends of Father Damien, Frans Hemerijckx joined forces to found the Damien Foundation, now renamed as Action Damien.
12.
Frans Hemerijckx remains as one of the inspirations behind the foundation whose activities soon spread across the world and Claire Vellut founded the Damien Foundation Trust India in 1992.
13.
Frans Hemerijckx died on 14 October 1969, at the age of 67, at Leuven, Belgium.
14.
Frans Hemerijckx married again and the couple had five children.