The campaign of anti leprosy in Brazil and Santa Catarina: between philanthropy and social exclusion of healthy children of lepers

Abstract

This article aims to show how was the implementation of the anti leprosy campaign in Brazil in the first half of the twentieth century. It focuses, on the Santa Catarina region, the action strategies aimed essentially dedicate to the problem of healthy offspring of the sick. These strategies are supported in medical and philanthropy preceptes. In this sense, it analyzes the formation of an entity, the “Sociedade de Assistência aos Lázaros e Defesa contra a Lepra de Santa Catarina”, in the prophylaxis plan and eradication of leprosy that was personified by a preventorial institution, the “Educandário Santa Catarina”, place to the exclusion of hundreds of healthy children and adolescents, from the 1940s.