Johanna Decker

Johanna Decker (19 June 1918 – 9 August 1977) was a Roman Catholic missionary doctor from West Germany who was murdered in Rhodesia, during the Rhodesian Bush War.

[7] Decker engaged actively in the church's youth work, and by 1939 the idea of joining the missionary medical service had matured in her mind.

[7] On the Feast of the Epiphany in 1946 Hanna Decker had taken a solemn vow that once her medical studies were completed she would dedicate at least ten years to missionary work.

Decker immediately joined the recently established (1948) Fatima Mission Hospital in a rural part of northern Matabeleland, roughly 130 miles / 200 km to the north-west of the city of Bulawayo.

[5] Throughout her time in Africa, she provided reports in letters to the Missionary Medical Institute in Würzburg about her activities and experiences.

From the outset she reported good cooperation with the Mariannhill Missionaries[a] from South Africa, and this was a recurring theme throughout her time at the Fatima Mission Hospital.

The first consists of building up the medical provision, involving pioneering work and plenty of "start-up difficulties": that is followed by a second phase of operating under the "more or less normal circumstances of a rural hospital".

)[5] The pioneering build-up phase started with getting to know the local population, challenges of mutual understanding, the need for constant improvisation with regard to diagnoses and treatments, and above all shortages Addressing the shortages would involve adventurous and exhausting bus trips lasting several days, clutching the vital "medicines box", and often leaving her with the feeling of being "not so much a doctor as a salesman or woman, hawking goods and services from door to door".

[c] Occasional holidays, each lasting several weeks, took place every few years and were used to organise support, hold presentations or attend training courses.

The total cost of the building and the extensive surrounding infrastructure involved amounted to the equivalent of roughly 640,000 Marks, of which the West German government agreed to pay 75%, leaving Misereor, the charitable wing of the Roan Catholic church in Germany, to pay the balance.

Much of what she writes concerns personnel matters, building construction management and the permanently pressing problems of finance.

Once the initial start-up phase was completed, records show a local hospital staff comprising 10 nurses, 6–8 midwifery trainees and 15 care assistants.

Sources refer to estimates that within the catchment area covered by the St. Paul's Mission Hospital there were between 40,000 and 60,000 people living.

[5] On the early afternoon of 9 August 1977 two heavily armed "drunken terrorists" / "nationalist guerillas" forced their way through the hospital main door.

They found Dr. Decker and her Austrian-born colleague, Sister Ferdinanda Ploner, a recently arrived South African passport holder, examining and treating patients in the dispensary.

Decker gave them the contents of the cash till, but this was insufficient so she told the attackers that she had more money in her house which she would go and collect.

[1] As the war intensified, the murder of Hanna Decker resonated widely in southern Africa and western Europe, putting an abrupt end to the history of the St. Paul's Mission Hospital.