American Mission Hospital

The American Mission Hospital (known formerly as the Mason Memorial Hospital) is a private non-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 Arabian side of the Persian Gulf. Today, the hospital offers round-the-clock specialist medical & dental services and operates two satellite clinics in the country.

The origins of the hospital can be traced back to 1888, with the establishment of an Arabian missionary service by the theological seminary of the Dutch Reformed Church in New Brunswick, New Jersey. In the 1890s, the arrival of the American missionary Samuel Zwemer, James Cantine, and the Australian missionary Amy Wilkes to Bahrain saw the initiation of basic medical services in a mission house, a precursor to the establishment of the hospital. The first Western-trained resident doctors, doctors Sharon Thoms and Marion Wells (a husband-and-wife team), later arrived in 1900. In 1901, the Hakim of Bahrain Isa ibn Ali Al Khalifa helped purchase land for construction of a hospital complex to replace the mission house. With sufficient donations from the Mason family in New York, the mission constructed the 24-bed Mason Memorial Hospital in 1902 and officially opened it on January 26, 1903.

Soon after the hospital opened, it began to attract patients from across the Persian Gulf; from places like Qatif, Al Hasa, Oman, Qatar, Najd and Bushire. By 1924, the hospital had 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.

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