Human-Centered Leader: Dr. Ruth Pfau
What I conceptualize as Human-Centered Leadership is describe by Maslow’s Theory of Leadership stating that leaders have “deep feelings of empathy and affection for all human beings”. Empathy is a human trait, involving the ability to understand and share the feelings of other people with compassion. Likewise, Alfred Adler’s term of “social interest,” highlights “leadership as a feeling of kinship with all other humans”. Leader who ventures into unknown areas of service to society to improve the lives of their fellow humans.
I want to highlight Dr. Ruth Pfau, a great Human-centered leader, who changed the lives of people impacted by infectious disease of Leprosy.
I still remember the day, when I flinched inwardly, as it was hard for me to look at Sabina’s deformed hands while she was talking to me about living with leprosy. Sabina said that she is grateful for her “good life”.
“Good life?” I thought. Sabina’s hands were deformed, missing their fingertips. She was also missing several toes. But when I asked her how she really felt about herself and her life, she replied, “if it was not for Dr. Ruth Pfau, I would be an outcast, destitute, living in the gutter. As a leper, my life would have been worse than a rat’s life.” The stigma of infection of leprosy is ingrained in our minds.
This true description of Sabina’s misery shook me, and I resolved to look deeply into the work of Dr. Ruth Pfau. During my research, I also had the honor to meet Dr. Ruth Pfau and observe her human-empathy.
Some sixty years ago, when the deformative infection of Leprosy was a stigma in every human society, Dr Ruth Pfau emerged as a woman, a human-centered leader. Her humanitarian work has been a well-kept secret for a larger world. I know her tremendous on ground leadership work through my architectural research project on Leprosy Center. Born in Germany in 1929, Dr. Pfau was a medical doctor who survived under the Nazis during World War II and her family’s grueling existence in the early postwar years.
In 1958, Dr. Pfau had an unscheduled stop in Karachi on her way to India, due to visa issues. During that one-day stop, her hosts, invited her to the leper colony and she visited their patients in the city.
There she witnessed in horror the rats eating the numb fingers and toes of leprosy patients who were living next to open sewers. These people had been cast out of society as a result of the infectious disease and stigma.
Dr. Pfau’s empathetic heart compelled her to help the small group of Good Samaritans who were taking care of leprosy patients. She was not able to walk away from the plight of these human beings and to continue with her life. That visit in 1958 changed the course of her life, and, more importantly, changed the destinies of countless leprosy patients such as Sabina, who were living in the most inhumane conditions. Dr. Pfau gave them back their human dignity.
Dr. Pfau dedicated herself to the eradication of leprosy in South Asia, including Pakistan and Afghanistan. Founded the Mary Adelaide Leprosy Center and embraced leprosy-stricken people with open arms.
While Dr. Pfau’s original desire was to help leprosy patients, she soon found out that the disease is just the tip of a deep-rooted systemic problem, needing a wholistic approach to rehabilitate both patients and families. Dr. Pfau’s selfless leadership and her empathy to her patients resulted in 57 years of dedicated work helping people stigmatized by leprosy.
Known as “the Angel of Karachi” by the city’s residents, and “Saint in Action” throughout the country, Dr Pfau led the community to alleviate suffering, which ameliorated the barriers of prejudice and fear above and beyond the divisions created by religion, politics, color or societal status.
This is a true narrative of a human-centered leadership and our world needs more leaders like Dr. Ruth Pfau.
Farzana Chohan