Araras a small village of less than a thousand people in Sao Paolo Brazil would make a strangers think they’ve landed in a ghost town.
According to reports by Daily Mail, residents of Araras suffer from Xeroderma Pigmentosum (XP), a disease which leads to skin inability to repair damage caused by ultraviolet light.
Residents who suffer XP talk during a meeting in the village. Their umbrellas, which protect them from the sun, surround them.
One of the most affected villager Djalma Jardin’s face has disfigured by the disease, leaving him with just one eye which also can not close so he sleeps with a plaster over it. “If I go out I feel the sun burning me,’ he said. ‘I go to bed and wake up the next day with a small spot, and then in a couple of days it’s growing quickly, like the one I got in my eye which never stopped growing. It’s an awful disease, terrible.” He said.
Djalma Jardin left with one eye that can’t close because of Xeroderma Pigmentosum
Sadly, the disease eventually took Jardin’s cost him his life. His family had already lost a relative to the disease and Jardin’s brothers and his sister are also affected.
Another villager Deide who has lost much of his face to the incurable disease. He said: ‘I had surgery to remove the palate and the right jawbone. Without the prosthesis I couldn’t talk.’
Sao Paulo-based genetics biologist Dr Carlos Menck who went to the village to try to identify the genetic mutation affecting the people said that the disease is a inherited disease and 600 out of the 800 villagers were carry a recessive XP gene.
A village boy protects himself from the sun with a roof made of card over his bicycle
There is no cure for XP but doctors have now warned villagers to stay out of the sun completely – and it is hoped this advice will save many lives.
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