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AN AFRICAN REFLECTION

The story of Doctor Albert Schweitzer is always told in Africa, sometimes anecdotally, other times as part of the main lecture on how pioneers of medicine worked in Africa.

Doctor Albert Schweitzer won international fame for his many talents and setting up Lambarene Hospital two miles north of Ogowe river in Gabon, but in the continent of Africa Schweitzer is regarded as the century's shining example of a spiritual and charismatic humanitarian.

"Doctor Albert Schweitzer was not just a medical Doctor as such, he was a man of great philosophical learning", says Dr. George Ntoko, a 45 year old Radiotherapist from Cameroun, who visited Lambarene as part of his housemanship.

"Dr. Schweitzer's combination of medicine and philosophy brought a new phenomenon in north south co-operation which remains of great importance until today".

He brought medicine closer to the people he treated, not in terms of distance, because psychologically the patient in Dr. Schweitzer's Lambarene Hospital was closer to his home and his Doctor than the patient of today, says Doctor Ntoko.

At Lambarene Hospital, Dr. Schweitzer tried to keep the patient in his general social environment. Since the hospital was a new strange environment he tried to make the patient feel at home. This made the healing process faster, better and easier.

Dr. Albert Schweitzer lived during a time and in an African environment where he had to create new approaches to be able to solve individual problems and communication problems.

The medicine of today bases its approach on the individual in the sense that it looks at the person who has come in without any consideration for what is happening in the patient's community.

For Dr. Schweitzer medicine did not start and end at the hospital.

Lambarene Hospital was the eye for what was happening in the community, so when he treated a patient he would always try to find out what was happening in his community to discover how best he could prevent that patient from coming back to hospital.

Patients, at the same time, were allowed to bring in to Lambarene Hospital what would make them feel at home. The reason was Schweitzer's discovery that, even not being ill, Africans tended to feel insecure and worry if they were away not only from their family but their livestock. Why? Because at that time - and for most villagers in Africa even up to now - livestock is considered as a form of bank-account to be personally supervised. So, Schweitzer allowed a patient to bring in - apart from his wife and perhaps one or two of his children - some of his livestock like goats and chickens and also eat food from his home. He even let prescribed medicine be administered not by a nurse but - if possible - by close relatives.

If you bear in mind that Albert Schweitzer himself was coming from a Northern culture which was still engaged in colonising Africa, declaring everything they found in Southern cultures backward and primitive, his approach was a complete departure from the norm.

Doctor George Ntoko who has worked as a medical doctor in several countries in Africa told Face of Africa that since Dr. Albert Schweitzer pioneered in "Africanising" medicine several hospitals on the continent allow a patient's family to be close to the hospital. They, however, are not as tolerant as Schweitzer was to allow livestock on the premises of the hospital and to give relatives permanent access to the patient. A patient's relatives may live close to the hospital and go to see the patient during visiting hours only.

All this explains why Dr. Albert Schweitzer who worked in Africa during the colonial period is not looked at as belonging to the colonial column.

African medical circles hold Albert Schweitzer’s humanitarian efforts on the continent in esteem because he gave medicine a social background. It was not just the transfer of technology from the North to the South but he studied how the African environment accepted his technology and integrated it so that it was easy to take and understandable.

There is a lot to learn from Dr. Albert Schweitzer’s work in Africa, one prominent African Doctor insisted. It should be part of every Doctor's personal experience to try and find out how Doctor Albert Schweitzer did it, said Doctor Ntoko.

In Nigeria - according to Dr. Ntoko - psychiatrists have already followed Doctor Schweitzer's footsteps and have set up a World Health Organisation - WHO -supported project. They have introduced what is called "Native Psychiatry" where mental patients come to a hospital with their family and an environment similar to their home is created. This means if a patient was a farmer he is even allowed to farm a small patch in the hospital grounds if he is well enough. The experiment has proved very successful.

Of course, Doctor Schweitzer had already done it - 87 years ago - under totally different circumstances in which, for example, he even had to travel by canoe because there were no roads.

In Africa, especially in Gabon itself where Doctor Albert Schweitzer set up Lambarene Hospital 87 years ago, villagers still talk favourably of him and, says Dr. Ntoko, if you came in as a medical practitioner you are compared to Schweitzer who has become the yardstick of a good doctor.

Gift Musarurwa / Zimbabwe

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