He has some features in common with Dr. Albert Schweitzer. He is tall like him and has a moustache, and somewhat of a beard. But, more significantly, he has the same obsession to help the suffering poor.

Albert Schweitzer had abandoned a successful career as a musicologist and religious educator in Europe, and at the age of 30 began to study medicine. After obtaining his medical degree, he went to Africa and devoted his life to treating the poor and sick in his legendary clinic in Lambarene, Gabon, in what was then known as French Equatorial Guinea. For his work he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952.

Dr. Ramon Vila, a young Spanish physician, has devoted his life to treating destitute patients in Niefang, a town in Equatorial Guinea, a West African country neighboring Gabon. Getting to know Dr. Vila revealed to me a kind of idealism rarely seen nowadays. I was visiting Ro Muni, the continental half of Equatorial Guinea, with some medical colleagues. We were appraising the health situation in the country. We had arrived at Niefang, a small, sparsely populated, neglected town in the interior. The high humidity made the heat even more oppressive.

In the town hospital I met Dr. Vila. Calm and self-assured, he radiated warmth. That I was born in Argentina, a former Spanish colony, helped establish an immediate rapport between us.

He was treating a difficult medical case, an older man whose body was covered by large, irregularly shaped, infected ulcers. The infections, with the heat and lack of hygiene, reeked. Dr. Vila described the health status of the other patients in the ward, and then he led us on a tour of the rest of the hospital.

He took us to the delivery room. Ill at ease, he told us that they had to share it with the first aid room, a fact that increased the possibilities for the spread of infections. The hospital's scarce financial resources, he explained, made this unavoidable.

We continued our visit. Everywhere we went I received the same impression: crowded facilities, poverty, lack of essential items, run-down services. Dr. Vila did not seem to be affected by these difficulties. I, however, felt discouraged and annoyed.

Soon afterwards he took us to his house, located near the hospital. The house was small but well kept. Most of the time, however, it lacked running water and electricity. I asked Dr. Vila about his previous experience. He had graduated from university in Barcelona, he said, where he married Mercedes, a fellow student. Since they were both interested in working in developing countries, soon afterwards they went to Nicaragua.

"We chose that country," he told me, "following a curious circumstance. I was studying a rather unusual case, one of only 211 recorded in the medical literature. Suddenly, I was struck by the irrationality of my study. What was its purpose, I thought, when all over the world millions of human beings are hungry and live in total misery? We decided to go to Nicaragua. I learned to look at death in a new way. I found the Nicaraguans to be a truly remarkable and stoic people, with a profound sense of friendship and love. However, when one of them is killed during the war, they quietly bury the dead and continue their struggle for life".

After spending some time in Nicaragua, Dr. Vila and his wife decided to go to Africa and, through a Spanish government organization, they were sent to the rural hospital where we met. They soon developed a special relationship with the people in the area. When we were visiting the hospital, we saw Mercedes teaching a nutrition class to a group of community health workers.

We had some cold drinks—a rare treat—and continued our chat. We discussed the case of the patient with the ulcers. We agreed on the usefulness of finding and treating diseases frequent in that area. For somebody from the industrialized world, they could only be found in medical textbooks. I assumed that, after having a good professional experience, he would return to Barcelona. It is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe and, I thought, he probably would develop a brilliant career in his native city. I asked him about his plans for the future.

"I want to remain here," he told me calmly. "You see, there are times when one does things not because of the comfort they bring but for a different reason. a moral call if you wish. And that is the challenge that I found here. In Barcelona I would be irritated by a temporary lack of electricity or by what I could think is an unchanging traffic light. Here I fight every day against death, and many times I lose the battle. But here I feel fulfilled. I know that in this place, despite its primitive conditions, my work makes a difference. And I wouldn't change it for anything in the world".