Schweitzer Hospital Steadily Expanding

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31320, 16 March 1967, Page 6

Schweitzer Hospital Steadily Expanding

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter)

LAMBARENE (Gabon). Steady expansion has marked the work of the Albert Schweitzer Hospital in Lambarene since the founder’s death on September 4,1965.

The number of fresh cases treated has reached 6000 a year, of whom between 450 and 500 are in-patients. Confinements alone have increased from 315 in 1964 to some 500 this year, while surgical operations have risen from 950 in 1964 to about 1300

this year. There are also 150 lepers.

All these are cared for by four white doctors under the direction of Dr. Walter Munz, whom the late Dr. Schweiter himself appointed as his successor; 14 white nurses of seven different nationalities; and 38 locally-trained African nurses, 30 of whom are men and eight women. New Building The hospital itself is being extended and modernised. Two new air-conditioned surgical blocks and a bungalow to accommodate surgical patients are being built on 50 acres of land recently acquired for the use of the hospital. Drainage and sanitary arrangements are also being improved and modernised. Mrs Rhena EckertSchweitzer, Dr. Schweitzer’s

daughter, has taken over the post of administrator in accordance with her father's wishes.

The work of the hospital is also being developed in the field of research. Facilities are offered to research workers who wish to study cases as part of a research programme. Thus, an American cancer expert came to study 176 cases of cancer, while another American spent several months at the hospital working on problems connected with allergy to penicillin. While the incidence of tuberculosis is on the increase, cancer appears to occur at about the same rate in Lambarene as anywhere else. But it does not affect the same parts of the body. The organs more usually treated are the liver, the urinary system and the skin.