One figure has been at the centre of this dramatic turnaround: Dr Maria Aschhoff, 72, a German doctor who has been running the St Thomas Hospital and Leprosy Centre at Chetput since 1960. It was a long, circuitous route that brought her to this forsaken pocket of the world. She grew up with images of missions to New Guinea, and Aschhoff confides that as a young girl she often dreamt about going there-even in the face of opposition from mortified parents. The dream was in gestation as she worked for a medicine degree. Eventually her parents relented and in '57 she joined the Medical Mission Institute of Wuerzburg, an organisation engaged in sending doctors to developing countries. Deputed to go to Africa, she was close to packing her bags when Dr F. Hemerijckx, founder of the Leprosy Centre at Polambakkam, Tamil Nadu, chanced to visit Wuerzburg. He promptly invited Dr Aschhoff to come to India, as there was a dearth of doctors to care for leprosy patients. She had little knowledge of leprosy work and treatment but, sensing that it represented a gaping hole in health care, she took it on. Since leprosy was absent in Germany, she underwent training in Spain in preparation for coming to India.