Yohei Sasakawa said in a statement Friday that he has written to the Chinese government and International Olympic Committee appealing against the ban on people affected by leprosy and other listed diseases.

According to Sasakawa, China has published a "guideline to Chinese law for foreigners coming to, leaving or staying in China during the Olympics," which states that, "anyone with listed diseases such as yellow fever, cholera, VD, leprosy, infectious pulmonary tuberculosis or AIDS will be prohibited" from entering the country during the games.

In a statement released through the Nippon Foundation's London office, Sasakawa said, "Earlier this week the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, unanimously approved a resolution tabled by Japan entitled 'Elimination of Discrimination Against Persons Affected by Leprosy and their Family Members.'

"And we were pleased to see that China was among the 58 countries which co-sponsored the resolution. However, the ban is clearly an infringement of the human rights of people who have been affected by the disease."

Leprosy is a chronic bacterial disease that mainly affects the skin and nerves. Left untreated it can result in deformity. It is cured using multi-drug therapy and is only very slightly contagious, and 99 percent of the people in the world have a natural immunity to it, according to the Nippon Foundation.

Sasakawa, the World Health Organization's special ambassador for the elimination of leprosy, says that the ban is a "violation of human rights."

He has spent the last 30 years working for the elimination of the illness and was recently appointed a goodwill ambassador by the Japanese government for the human rights of people affected by leprosy.

Sasakawa is chairman of the Nippon Foundation -- a private, nonprofit organization established in 1962 for the purpose of carrying out philanthropic activities both in Japan and overseas using revenues from motorboat racing.