 Through his focus on cooperation, he has been able to achieve goals that would not have been possible working single-handedly.Yohei Sasakawa sees leprosy elimination as a personal mission, inherited from his father, Ryoichi Sasakawa.In 1965, he accompanied his father to a leprosy treatment facility in South Korea, and the shock at seeing, first-hand, the discrimination faced by people affected by leprosy, convinced him of the need for leprosy control, leading him to conduct own activities.