Talsi leprosarium is situated five kilometres outside the small town of Talsi. It consists of a number of buildings surrounding a chapel; some of these are abandoned. The patients used to be housed in these buildings, but as there are now so few, they live in a large, two-storey building that also holds the offices of the medical staff.
The number of patients is constantly on the decline. In the year 1998 there were only nine staying in the hospital and eleven being treated as out-patients, a total of twenty, as opposed to thirty-one in 1997 and over 200 during the period of Soviet rule.
This leprosarium is the only existing one in the Baltic region, and used to take its patients from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Currently, all the patients are Latvian. Leprosy patients in Estonia are now looked after by a Dermatology Service.
(Information kindly provided by Dr Jacques Millan, February 2000)