American Mission Hospital

The American Mission Hospital is a 120 year old private not-for-profit hospital located in Manama, Bahrain. Established in 1903, as the Mason Memorial Hospital, it was the first modern hospital in the country and, possibly, along the entire Persian Gulf region. The hospital offers specialist medical, dental, and wellness services from its main branch in Manama, and from its branches or satellite clinics in the country, located at Saar, Amwaj Islands and Riffa. Coinciding with its 120th anniversary, a fifth and the largest branch, King Hamad American Mission Hospital, was opened in A'Ali on 26 January 2023. It started receiving patients at the new branch, from March 2023.

The origins of the hospital can be traced back to 1889, when Arabian Mission, a Christian mission service organization, was established by graduating students of the New Brunswick Theological Seminary, which was run by the Dutch Reformed Church, in New Brunswick, New Jersey. The articles of association were signed in New York in August 1889, and the organization began formally with eight trustees and two graduates missionaries, Samuel Zwemer and James Cantine. These two founders of the Arabian Mission went through intensive Arabic language training in Beirut, Lebanon, during 1890–1892, before they embarked on their work. James Cantine went to Basrah in Mesopotamia, in August 1892, and immediately started building a school and a hospital there, while Zwemer traveled to Bahrain. Zwemer landed on the shores of Bahrain on 7 December 1892 and started a medical dispensary. In 1895, during one of his periodic visits to Baghdad, he met an Australian missionary nurse, Amy Wilkes, and they soon got engaged. The following year, on 18 May 1896, they were married at the British consulate, in Baghdad, by one Rev. Canon Parfit. After Zwemer came back to Bahrain with his bride, the now husband-wife team continued to run the clinic, dispensary, and bookshop, all from a rented house in Manama souq. Later, they moved to a mission house, from where they initiated some basic medical services. It was a precursor to the establishment of the hospital. The first Western-trained resident doctors, Sharon J Thoms and Marion Wells Thoms, a husband-and-wife team, both medical graduates of the University of Michigan, arrived in 1900. And they - with the Zwemers - decided to find a place to build a hospital. In 1901, the then Hakim of Bahrain Isa ibn Ali Al Khalifa helped them purchase land for the construction of a hospital complex to replace the mission house. Then, with sufficient donations from one Mason family in New York, the mission constructed the 24-bed Mason Memorial Hospital in 1902. It was officially opened on 26 January 1903. Soon after the hospital opened, it began to attract thousands of patients from across the Gulf; from places like Qatif, al-Hasa, Oman, Qatar, Najd and Bushire. Even though another hospital, in memory of Queen Victoria who died in 1901, was set up by the British in 1905, on the requests and donations of some Hindu merchants in Bahrain, it was not consistent in its functioning. The Victoria Memorial Hospital (Bahrain) was often short of staff and it is recorded that the patients were sent to the Mission Hospital. By 1924, the mission hospital was having 33,000 outpatients and 600 inpatients a year, with an average of 100 patients being treated a day. Throughout the hospital's history, the majority of healthcare workers in the hospital were employed from Western countries or India although many Bahrainis were also recruited and trained in the medical sciences.

Hospital data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).