Hôpital Albert Schweitzer is a busy place. Since family members stay with patients, it can be quite crowded. The observation room is a ward with perhaps 20 beds squeezed into it with family gathered around, many patients with IV’s or casts or bandages, and there may be half a dozen more beds in the hallways. People sit on wooden benches waiting for treatment or holding sick children. Others lie down on the benches or the concrete floor to try to sleep while they wait. In Haiti, people wait and wait and wait.
The lights are mostly kept off in the daytime, probably to save power and perhaps to make it seem cooler. In the bit of natural light that makes its way to the hallways, people quietly tend to their loved ones.
Even with the crowding and relatively primitive conditions, the hospital smells clean. Floors are constantly being mopped, and outside areas swept. The operating rooms are being remodeled, and will soon be sparkling and modernized. The library, lined with dark wood bookshelves and stone walls bearing Haitian artwork, is air-conditioned and equipped with wireless internet.
In the surgery ward, there are patients will all kinds of issues: one young woman with burns, a man with external fixation on his leg and a foot that he might lose, a couple of new amputees. These patients were all in the same room. There is an isolation ward with a TB patient, and a medical ward with untold problems. One family was praying around their loved one with chanting and holding of hands.
The cholera ward is in a separate building that, until the outbreak, housed the boutique that sells local art. The rooms are dim but brightly painted, probably a remnant from their prior function. There were 8 to 10 adults in one room, each on an army-style canvas cot, and a similar number of children with their mothers in another room. The children all looked pretty good, since they were rehydrated and over the diarrhea, and had regained their appetites. One tiny girl who looked about 6 months old but could have been twice that, was eating crackers from a big metal bowl she held in her lap. I greeted each of them, but they couldn’t understand me and just looked at this strange apparition with wide eyes.
Back in the main hospital, I walked through the pediatric ward and saw naked little brown babies lying next to their mothers on cots, or older babies and children being nursed or fed, and others asleep with IV’s. Many cots lined the hallway. Nearby in the premie room there were 3 or 4 tiny, tiny babies in clear isolettes surrounded by family, some with NG tubes, one with a heat lamp, but none with telemetry. One tiny baby weighing just 1 pound was off in a corner covered by a pink blanket. These areas are not isolated, as the walls do not go all the way to the ceiling. The doors to the outside are always open, and when I was looking at the premies with a nurse, a chicken wandered in!
As I walked through the halls of this third-world hospital, I wondered, why am I drawn to this place? Why am I not horrified? People are sick or injured, and may not have enough to eat. Their families sleep on the floor. They wait. Yet people here are getting help, however slowly, and that, at least, is gratifying.
* * *
Hôpital Albert Schweitzer was founded in 1956 by Larimer Jr. and Gwen Grant Mellon, inspired by its namesake, Swiss physician, humanitarian, and theologian Albert Schweitzer. Larry was a scion of the Mellon family of Mellon Bank, Gulf Oil, and Carnegie Mellon University. After a year of college and a failed marriage, Larry decided he didn’t want to go into the family businesses and bought a cattle ranch in Arizona. There he met Gwen Grant, also a divorcée. They courted, and he spent time overseas in the OSS during World War II. Larry and Gwen married in 1946, joined their families, and continued to live on the ranch.
One day in 1947, Larry saw an article in Life magazine1 about Albert Schweitzer, who had founded a hospital in rural Africa and went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize in 19522. Immediately captivated by Schweitzer’s philosophy of “reverence for life,” Mellon struck up a correspondence with him. The two men met, talked philosophy, and eventually thought of themselves as “brothers in spirit.”3
Larry Mellon decided that he, too, wanted to help those in need by becoming a doctor and building a hospital. With Schweitzer’s encouragement, Larry returned to college at age 37 and completed his pre-med studies at Tulane. “Don’t try to pass the exams with flying colors,” Schweitzer advised him regarding medical school. “Content yourself with squeaking through honorably.”4 Larry received his M.D. from Tulane Medical School in 1954 at the age of 44, while Gwen earned a degree as a laboratory technician and scrub nurse.
The Mellons’ criteria for building a hospital was that it be in a place of need, with available land, in a rural setting where people could support themselves.5 Following a summer in Haiti, during which he did research in tropical medicine,6 Larry Mellon realized that there was an opportunity to build a hospital there. The Haitian government offered the Standard Fruit Company’s abandoned banana plantation in Deschapelles, 60 miles from Port-au-Prince. The company had left following a banana blight, but there were 60 acres and 42 houses on site built in the 1900’s. Work was begun on the hospital while Larry was still in medical school. Gwen supervised construction and continued to be the eyes and ears of the hospital throughout her life.
Larry felt that he could change the course of illnesses by bringing in potable water, educating new mothers about newborn tetanus, and developing community health programs. Today, Hôpital Albert Schweitzer is still involved in a broad range of activities that contribute to the health and well-being of Haitians. There is a water committee made up of Haitians that is building hundreds of latrines. There is the HAS Haiti Timber Re-Introduction Project (HTRIP), planting Mahogany, Spanish Cedar, and fruit trees in Haiti. A malnutrition clinic serves to nourish and educate those in need. The Hanger Clinic for amputee prosthetic fabrication and physical therapy and the Rehabilitation Technician Training Program have been established on site. The hospital employs mostly Haitians, contributing to the economic independence of many in the area.
HAS sees a constant stream of thinkers dedicated to improving the situation in Haiti. Just while I was there, a professor and some doctoral students from the School of Public Health and the School of Forestry at Yale arrived to make plans for bringing a class of 20 students back during their spring break to address issues in agronomy, water, and cholera. We had doctoral students in global health and malaria studies from Tulane, and pediatricians and internists serving at the hospital. There was a 4-day malnutrition seminar for nurses in the hospital library. Every morning there is a conference in the library where current cases are presented by and for the doctors and nurses, and then a presentation is made on a relevant medical topic.
A brief history of the hospital on the Friends of HAS web site states, 7 “The hospital opened as a 100-bed facility with diagnostic, clinical and surgical services. Over the years, it has expanded to include outreach and prevention programs, as well as services to strengthen household economies. From the hospital’s earliest days, the Mellons established the values and principles which led to its founding. These include Dr. Schweitzer’s philosophy of reverence for all living things; a sense of humility; respect for the dignity of the Haitian people; and a dedication to assisting those who are less fortunate improve their lives.”
Hôpital Albert Schweitzer continues to admirably follow this precept. That is why I see it as an oasis of hope in the heart of Haiti.
5 Jenny Mellon Grant, personal communication
