By Mary Noel Menezes, RSM
On October 24, 1935 six Sisters of Mercy arrived in British Guiana bound for Mahaica, where they began caring for the large number of patients at the Mahaica Leprosarium, as it was then called. They and many Sisters who came after gave 35 years of dedicated service there. Before the Sisters of Mercy assumed charge of the hospital, another group of Sisters of the Immaculate Conception from Moravia, Czechoslovakia, had worked for two years under Dr F G Rose. The General Council of the Sisters of Mercy had agreed, on the request of Bishop George Weld, SJ to provide Sisters for this sensitive work on condition that the medical authorities make improvements on the compound. It was difficult