Dr. Ruth Pfau – Do angels live on earth ?

My grandmother used to tell us bedtime stories. One rainy night, she stated to tell us about a village of people who were very happy people. She told us that their village had lots and lots of greenery and the people had no worries on their minds. Until a man had a terrible pimple on his hand which swelled rapidly until it was the size of a grape. The people of the village tried many of their herbal recipes which were none but useful. As the days progressed the man’s condition got worse. The pimple now covered most of his fingers. The people were thinking about banishing him from the village, when another man had the same disease. The wound on the second man was swelling and it stank very badly. The chiefs of the village decided to throw them into a room very far away from the village.

The people thought this disease was over but in reality it was far from over. Two or three more people suffered the same disease and they were banished, too. At this time a roll of thunder struck the sky and the lightning was seen from the windows of our room. My grandmother continued after a moment’s silence. The people heard a rumor that a beautiful young lady was coming from abroad to treat the diseased people. The people thought that the lady was insane because the people of the village considered the people inside the old shack to be beyond recovery. The lady arrived and asked the villagers to lead her to the people. The people sat huddled in a corner holding their damaged hands. The lady took the banished people into a room to treat them. A few hours later the people arrived from inside looking better than ever and obviously cured.

It turned out that the lady was Dr. Ruth Pfau. Pfau was born in Leipzig, Germany, on 9 September 1929. She had four sisters and one brother. Her home was destroyed by bombing during World War II. Following the post-war Soviet occupation of East Germany she escaped to West Germany along with her family, and chose medicine as her future career. During the 1950s, she studied medicine at the University of Mainz.

She joined the Daughters of the Heart of Mary, a Catholic order, which later sent her to southern India; however, a visa issue meant she became stuck in Karachi. She travelled to various parts of Pakistan and across the border to Afghanistan to rescue patients who were abandoned by their families or locked in small rooms for a lifetime.

Early morning on 10 August 2017, Pfau died at the Aga Khan Hospital in Karachi after being admitted there on 4 August 2017. She was put on a ventilator after her condition worsened on 6 August. Pfau had been dealing with several health problems due to her advancing age, including heart disease, for which she has been undergoing treatment for several years.