In the Uzuakoli Leprosy Settlement in what is now Abia State, Nigeria, Methodist missionaries in the 1940s and 1950s partnered with medical researchers to trial a drug called Dapsone (DDS — diaminodiphenyl sulfone) on leprosy patients.
The results were transformative. DDS worked. It became the global standard anti-leprosy drug, adopted by the World Health Organisation and used to treat millions of leprosy patients worldwide. The drug that cured leprosy for the world was first proven effective on patients in a Methodist settlement in Eastern Nigeria.
This is not a minor historical footnote. Leprosy had been one of the most feared and socially devastating diseases in human history for millennia. The contribution of the Uzuakoli Leprosy Settlement to its eradication is a documented chapter in both medical and religious history that is almost entirely unknown to the Nigerian public.
Church Archive documents it here as a permanent record.