International Women’s Day (March 8th) – Doctor Louise Aall
Louise is the subject of our recent publication ‘Moon Madness: Dr. Louise Aall, Sixty Years of Healing in Africa’ by Alan Twigg.
March 8th 2020 marks this year’s International Women’s Day. The theme for this year is #eachforequal, calling for an “enabled world by being an equal world”, where women’s skills are valued. With that in mind, we look today to one of our books that includes a woman of strong skill and character. Without Dr. Louise Aall’s contributions to epilepsy research and treatment, this world would be less enabled. Today, we call for women to be taken in equal standing as men.
There are two quotes at the beginning of Louise’s biography. The first is one by the Dalai Lama, describing the infinite ability of those with courage. The second is about self-sacrifice; how it allows one to transcend the pleasure of a self-indulgent life (by Leo Tolstoy). These two traits – courage and self-sacrifice – capture Dr. Louise All’s character perfectly.
In 1959 Louise travelled as a solo physician in East Africa, where she discovered that epilepsy was rampant in the area of Tanganyika – with an incidence rate that was ten times higher than the global norm. Known as kifafa in Swahili (meaning Moon Madness), it had become a social epidemic, whereby epileptics were outcasts. Often, they were thrown out from their own homes. Their family members were disgraced, unable to marry ‘regular’ villagers. Louise was told, by the medical establishment, that there was no effective way to treat it.
She proved the establishment wrong, however, setting up a clinic in Manhenge, Tanzania, to treat patients with epilepsy. For the past sixty years she has maintained this clinic, even while living in Tsawwassen, B.C. The clinic isn’t Louise’s only accomplishment – not by a long shot. She was awarded a Red Cross medal in 1960, when she bravely went to a 300-bed hospital in the Belgian Congo, serving as the lone attending physician during the civil war. She assisted Novel Peace Prize Laureate Dr. Albert Shweitzer at his jungle clinic in Gabon, as she gained impressive knowledge on treating tropical diseases during her time in the Belgian Congo. She has also worked with the First Nations of Canada, as a psychiatrist and anthropologist.
Louise didn’t allow the fact that she was a woman to hold her back from her career, at a time when sexism was even more rampant than it is today. She often sacrificed socialising and company (having the potential to damage her reputation and threaten her safety), for a cause that she believed in. She is an embodiment of the spirit that International Women’s Day celebrates. Today, let every woman use her voice and ability to her full potential, as Louise has done.
Read more about Dr. Louise Aall in ‘Moon Madness: Dr. Louise Aall, Sixty Years of Healing in Africa’ by Alan Twigg: http://ronsdalepress.com/moon-madness/
