The Dehospitalization of the Last Patients of the Former Leprosarium São Roque

Abstract

This article aims to present the process of dehospitalization of the last patients in the Hospital de Dermatologia Sanitária do Paraná (HDSPR) - formerly Leprosário São Roque - and the consequences of long-term institutionalization in the lives of these individuals. Methodologically, the study is based on oral research and also seeks to use documents produced within the institution itself. For this, the reports of asylum patients themselves, their families and/or hospital staff are considered as a means of representing their trajectories. The study also makes a brief contextualization about leprosy, the health policies of the disease in Brazil and the history of HDSPR. Finally, the final considerations problematize the asylums condition of these patients after the overcoming of the hospital-colony model in the 1980s, and highlight the importance of the professionals who dedicated themselves to the preservation of the history of these places and of the individuals inserted in these spaces.