Erika Sutter: Seen with Different Eyes. Memories of a Swiss Ophthalmologist

As one of the last lifelong "demoiselles missionnaires," the Swiss ophthalmologist Erika Sutter dedicated over 30 years to working in South Africa during the apartheid era, where she and her African colleagues established village self-help groups. For this book, the Basel native, born in 1917, recounted her life story to her friend, the ethnologist Gertrud Stiehle – vividly, with a keen eye for social issues, subtle self-irony, and dry humor.

Erika Sutter studied in Basel during World War II and traveled via Sweden to South Africa, where she worked for the Swiss South African Mission at the Elim mission station. To proactively address the causes of eye diseases in the impoverished living conditions of the African population, she focused on empowering people to help themselves. Together with her African colleague and friend Selina Maphorogo, she established a sustainable network of village self-help groups, the so-called "Care Groups," and was thus able to largely eradicate the widespread blindness caused by trachoma. For her pioneering work, Erika Sutter received numerous international honors and awards, including an honorary doctorate from the University of Basel in 1995.