Ruth Pfau is a small frail woman, with
gray hair swept into a bun under a white veil with a border of flowers,
standing in a refugee camp that she herself has created for people in
flood-devastated Pakistan that has been deprived of everything.
She is
an 81 year-old German nun of the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, and she
cares for hundreds of people whose homes were swept away by floods.
For
the past two months she and her team have been looking after all those
who have sought refuge in a vacant lot near a bus station, Ruth and her
aides supply tents, food, water, medicine, and run a school.
"We are the only ones who go into these camps where, for one reason
or another, no one else seems to want or to be able to help these poor
people," says Ruth Pfau. Ruth Pfau, who is also a trained doctor, has
opened clinics for lepers in Pakistan.
She is also one of the few to
help the Hindu minority affected by the flood of. She
began her work more than 50 years ago, confronting the problem of
leprosy, saving children hidden in caves and barns, abandoned by parents
shocked and terrified they were contagious, while their suffering and
illness worsened.
Ruth Pfau has trained doctors from Pakistan and obtained donations from abroad. " Working with Dr Pfau is very, very difficult, because she has such immense stamina, that I don't think anyone can match ",
says national coordinator Merwyn Lobo, who has travelled with her for
over eleven years.
Born in Germany, in Leipzig, in 1929, Ruth Pfau grew
up fearing for her life first from allied bombing, and then when the
Russians arrived in the city. She risked he life to flee from East
Germany.
She says: " If I give any sense to these years, it is a preparation to be ready to help others”.
After completing a medical degree and joining a French Order, she decided to leave for India.
But
she was forced to stop in Pakistan due to an issue over visas, and in
that time saw Leprosy, a disease that she did not know existed.
SIC: AN/INT'L