100 Leva Leper colony

Bulgaria issued this coin to commemorate the leper colony established on St. Anastasia Island in the Black Sea, which operated from 1906 until 1962 — one of the last functioning leprosaria in southeastern Europe. Patients were forcibly isolated there under policies that persisted well into the communist period, long after effective treatment with promin and later dapsone had rendered such quarantine medically unnecessary. The colony's closure came only after sustained pressure from the World Health Organization.