Alas! None of us—including the great people we talk about in this book—are perfect. We are human and we all have flaws. Trouble is, when a person is famous and highly acclaimed like Albert Schweitzer was, it shows more. It kind of dampens the good story we’d like to tell. But we must stay truthful, with compassionate honesty while celebrating the good in the person as a whole. Wouldn’t we ourselves like to have the good parts of ourselves celebrated?
The Schweitzer Album, written and illustrated by Erica Anderson is a beautiful book which I enjoyed in the way a child might. Pictures of people in colourful Gabonese dress, young children playing among the huts, and animals everywhere. The book was a major resource for this story. But when one looks more critically, complaints about hygiene and sanitation are understandable.
Schweitzer has also been criticized for being paternalistic towards the staff and not accepting the local African people as equals. However, though this has become unacceptable in today’s culture, the era he lived in was marked by colonialism, paternalism and racist views.
Nevertheless, Dr. Schweitzer was a well-intentioned doctor who gave fifty years of his life to practicing medicine in this remote area where few of his colleagues would have dared to come. He was there to serve the unending rush of people who desperately needed medical care. Where would they have been without him?
THE HOSPITAL TODAY
In 2013, the Centennial year of the Schweitzer Hospital, it was still going strong. There was a staff of 260 doctors, nurses, lab technicians, and research assistants. They treat 20,000 patients a year and the hospital still retains the intimacy of a small village. Children run barefoot through corrugated iron clinic buildings, women hang clothes to dry on wash lines, and African music booms from giant speakers. “The hospital has a special place in our hearts. Patients feel comfortable here and are more likely to accept the treatment we give them”, said Sylvie Balla, a maternity nurse at the hospital.
Attached to the hospital is a world-renowned tropical disease research center which specializes in assessing new drugs and vaccines. “Almost all anti-malaria medicines on the market today have been evaluated here,” Ayota Akim Adegnika, an infectious disease researcher at the center, tells The Lancet. “In fact the Albert Schweitzer hospital, in one way or another, has been involved in every new development in the war against malaria in the past 30 years.”[1]
[1] Hektoen International, https://hekint.org/
This has been Part 39 of the Series A Life Worth Living. Read Part 40 – A Ministry of Service
March 23, 2026 at 4:36 pm
After reading Mr Schweitzer’s work and others writings of him I find it crazy how people would criticize Albert for being paternalistic towards the staff and not accepting the local African people as equals. He basically started this hospital from nothing and did what was required to keep the hospital functioning in this extremely difficult part of the world. Albert was a leader and a father to these people, without that leadership the job just would have not been done. Even the locals themselves would only listen to Albert and not the other doctors when it came to being supervised or doing the physical work around the hospital. I see this hospital as Albert’s art and he is the artist, much like Bach being the composer of his own piece. Let the artist paint and the composer compose.
Paternalism can be viewed in a negative light however perhaps in this case very necessary, did anyone read how once Albert told a native patient to take medicine he was given once a day for a week, however the patient took the whole lot of medicine at once hoping to get better faster.
Much respect for Albert, i think in todays world a bit more paternity might go a long way, and I’m not just talking about from professionals , lets start with mothers and fathers.