【Photo Diary】 (1) Visit to Norway, Poland
I would like to share with you some of the photographs taken during my visit to Norway and Poland from October 23 to 29, 2023, as chairman of The Nippon Foundation and WHO Goodwill Ambassador for Leprosy Elimination.
In Bergen, the second largest city in Norway, I attended the Armauer Hansen International Film Festival (AHIFF), commemorating the 150th anniversary of the discovery of Mycobacterium leprae, the causative agent of leprosy, by the Norwegian Dr. Gerhard Armauer Hansen in the city in 1873.
At the world's first leprosy film festival, I participated in the screening of “The Last Mile: On the Road to Eliminate Leprosy,” which documents my more than 40-year battle to eliminate leprosy, also known as Hansen’s disease, and the discrimination and stigma associated with it.
Later on the trip, I flew to Kraków, Poland’s old capital, to take part in a ceremony to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the Ryoichi Sasakawa Young Leaders Fellowship Fund (Sylff) at Jagiellonian University, the country’s oldest university established in 1364.
[October 24, Bergen, Norway]
Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen's Disease) Initiative and Bergen International Film Festival co-hosted AHIFF in collaboration with the University of Bergen and the Leprosy Museum.
The festival brought to close a year-long celebration of the 150th anniversary of Armauer Hansen’s discovery of the leprosy bacillus, following the two events jointly sponsored by the University of Bergen and the Sasakawa Leprosy (Hansen’s Disease) Initiative: a commemorative event on February 28 (the date of Hansen’s discovery) and an international conference on June 21-22. In total, over 200 stakeholders from around the world attended, including senior government officials, medical, human rights and historical preservation experts as well as researchers, NGO staff and organizations of persons affected by the disease.
BIFF organized free documentary film screenings for schools which included discussion in class before and after the screenings, with schools receiving educational material about leprosy ahead of time.
A total of 130 students from the high school, divided into two groups, took part.
(To be continued)