It was five months and three days from the moment that I put out feelers to see if I could get permission to visit Kalaupapa ...

Picture the scene. It’s 1961 and I’m a young white boy living in a small village named Zomba in Malawi. My parents and I ...

North Brother Island in New York City served as a quarantine zone for patients infected with deadly diseases such as smallpox ...

An endangered Hawaiian monk seal was the picture of bliss lolling about a shallow lava rock pool along Papaloa Beach with her ...

Father Damien de Veuster was a Belgian priest who subjected himself to leprosy to minister to the lepers’ colony on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. He lived from 1840-89. (Courtesy Photo) ...

Leprosy, or "Hansen's disease," was thought to be highly contagious and lacked a cure during Father Damien's years on Molokai, from 1873 until 1889. The Belgian missionary, from the Congregation of ...

WHEN I first flew over Molokai, the old battleground of Father Damien, and heard the airline stewardess say, “The Hansen’s disease settlement,” as she pointed down to the peninsula of ...

Joining the community Damien landed at Molokai on May 10, 1873. In a now famous letter to his brother, he wrote that he would make himself “a leper with lepers,” to “gain all to Christ.” ...

For information about Molokai and Kalaupapa , write to Destination Molokai Association, c/o Travel Sales Ltd., 1600 Kapiolani Blvd., Suite 925, Honolulu, Hawaii 96814.

The coronavirus has now infiltrated every county in the US, including the smallest one — a remote Hawaiian island with fewer than 100 residents that was home to a leper colony.

Until recently, Kalawao County on the island of Molokai, which has fewer than 100 residents and was used as a leper colony for decades, was the only county in the nation that hadn't reported a ...