The Swiss ophthalmologist Erika Sutter was born in Basel in 1917. She
spent 32 years working in Elim Hospital, founded by the Swiss Mission in
an impoverished rural area in North-Eastern South Africa. Together with
her African colleague and friend, Selina Maphorogo, she founded the Care
Groups, village self-help groups working for better health in their
communities. The movement is still active after more than 30 years, and
now has around 2,000 members, mostly women, in over 200 villages. Erika
Sutter has received numerous international honours and awards for her
pioneering work, including the award 'Woman of the Year' in 1984 from
the South African newspaper 'The Star', and an honorary doctorate from
the University of Basel. For the creation of this biography, Erika
Sutter spent many hours with the author, her friend Gertrud Stiehle,
telling the story of her long life ñ vividly, with a sharp eye for
social issues, a hint of self-irony, and dry wit. Her account does not
ignore events in the wider world. She experienced life on the
Swiss-German border during the Second World War, and her years of
working in South Africa were those when the apartheid policies of the
South African Government were becoming more and more repressive,
affecting many aspects of life in the country.