Claire Vellut

In 2012, Vice President, Mohd. Hamid Ansari presenting the “International Gandhi Award - 2011” to Dr. Claire Vellut, at a function, New Delhi, organized by the Gandhi Memorial Leprosy Foundation. Claire Marie Jeanne Vellut (1926–2013) was a Belgian-born naturalised Indian leprologist, humanist and the founder of the Damien Foundation India Trust, a non profit non governmental organization engaged in providing treatment and rehabilitation services to people with leprosy and tuberculosis in India. She spent 55 years in India treating leprosy and tuberculosis patients, associating with the state and central governments or independently under the aegis of the trust she founded in 1955.

Biography Claire Marie was born on 29 October 1926 in Antwerp, Belgium to Lucie Roebroek and Fernand Evariste Marc Alfred Vellut, an insurance inspector, as the youngest of their six children. She completed her schooling at Institut Saint-André, Ixelles and secured her graduate degree in medicine in 1952 from the Catholic University of Leuven during which period she was involved with the activities of the International Fraternal Association, an organization founded by Vincent Lebbe, a Lazarist priest. She also did an advanced course, Diploma in Tropical Medicine and Hygiene, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and did English language training in 1953. In 1954, she received the offer to work at the Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute and Hospital, New Delhi but chose to accept the invitation from Frans Hemerijckx, a Belgian leprologist, to join him in India to open an ambulatory leprosy control project at Polambakkam, a leprosy endemic small village near Kanchipuram in the south Indian state of Tamil Nadu. The system carried on for five years till the local government took over the operations with Vellut continuing as its medical officer. She also did a short training course in leprosy at the Calcutta School of Tropical Medicine during this time. Vellut continued with the activities of the trust for 55 years till 2009 and continued her association till her final departure from India in 2012.

Later years Death of a few people close to her in 2008 influenced Vellut to think about returning to Belgium and she spent most of the next three years travelling between Belgium, Mauritius and India. From 2009 onwards, she started engaging herself with the activities of the International Fraternal Association in Brussels by looking after the office duties and routine chores of the organization. She left India for the final time in July 2012.

Awards and honours The Government of India awarded her the civilian honour of Padma Shri in 1981. When the Government of India celebrated the 50th anniversary of Indian independence in 1997, Claire Vellut was one among the 50 women awarded with Stree Ratna honour. She was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Crown by the Royal Court of Belgium in 2009

Award gallery