New Prague resident speaking at DC rally

Alicia Roufs of New Prague will be speaking at a rally in Washington DC on Saturday, June 25, to help raise awareness for vitiligo, a skin disorder. Vitiligo is an autoimmune disease where the body’s immune system is mistakenly attacking healthy skin cells, which causes those cells to no longer produce pigment, creating white patches or spots on a person’s skin.

Roufs lives with vitiligo and said while not a physically harmful disease, it can be very hard on one’s mental state. She said many people with vitiligo have had some sort of discrimination against them and have felt like outcasts. Vitiligo affects about one to three percent of the world’s population and doesn’t discriminate between races or gender.

June is Vitiligo Awareness Month, with June 25 World Vitiligo Day. On that day Roufs will speak on the Capital steps to not only raise awareness of the disease, but to hopefully bring about more medical research into the disease. “The more people that know and understand, the less we as a community will feel alone and shamed,” said Roufs.