Hospital History - The Mombasa Hospital

HOSPITAL HISTORY AND DEVELOPMENT (1891 - 2009)

The first record of a hospital (and a surgeon) in Mombasa is to be found in an early seventeenth century manuscript, now in the British Library. This describes Mombasa in 1634, during the Portuguese occupation; but the occupation did not last, and there was to be an interval of some 250 years before Mombasa could benefit from a hospital once again.

The history of the Mombasa Hospital begins in 1891 when the Imperial British East Africa Company, which had been granted its charter from Queen Victoria only three years earlier, received a substantial donation to build a hospital. They chose to name it the English Hospital, and the Company gave the running of it to the Holy Ghost Fathers of the Roman Catholic Church.

In 1895 the newly-established East Africa Protectorate took over the Company, and with it the Hospital. At this time the combined population of Mombasa, Vanga and Malindi Districts was about 175,000, of whom some 300 were Europeans . It was for these few that the English Hospital catered. Dr. W. H. McDonald (a former employee of the Company) was appointed Chief Medical Officer and head of the Hospital.

The National Bank of India opened its Mombasa Branch in 1896, and this remained the only bank in the town until 1911. It is almost certain that the Hospital had its account with them. It certainly had an account with its successor, National and Grindlays Bank, and now with its successor, the Kenya Commercial Bank.

In 1897 three sisters of the Order of St. Joseph de Cluny arrived from France via Zanzibar. They were Mother Auxanne Maugee (1859-1902), a native of Martinique as Superior, Sister James Hearty (1860-1914) from Scotland and Sister Benilda Houston (1874-1946) from Donegal, Ireland. They were accompanied by Monsignor Allgeyer, Vicar Apostolic of Zanzibar, who escorted them to Sir Arthur Hardinge, H. M. Commissioner for the East Africa Protectorate (Mombasa at that time was the capital of the Protectorate). He in turn took them to the hospital; it was quite a formal introduction!

In 1901 Mother Auxanne returned to France where she died. A plaque in her memory was erected in the original Roman Catholic Church at Kwa Faransa (now the site of the Roman Cathedral). Later, possibly in the 1920s, the plaque was removed to the Hospital. Sisters Benilda and James were transferred to the Seychelles, where they lived the rest of their lives.

In November of the same year, 1901, three nurses from England arrived as replacements one of whom, Isabella Hill, was destined to marry Dr. McDonald.

In 1907 the British transferred the capital of the East Africa Protectorate from Mombasa to Nairobi (the headquarters of the East Africa & Uganda Railway had already been transferred to Nairobi in 1899). The following year, 1908, the British Administration opened the Native Civil Hospital in Makadara to cater for non-European patients in Mombasa.

There was no provision for maternity patients and in 1912 the first steps were taken to meet this need. A site was eventually chosen which overlooked the newly established Mombasa Golf Course. The Nursing Home had three rooms, which were often to be used as an overflow from the main Hospital.

The Mombasa Electric Light & Power Company was founded in 1909 and so, in the following year, the Hospital was enabled to obtain electric power, with the cable being suspended from palm trees. In 1920 the East Africa Protectorate became Kenya Colony and Protectorate, and in 1921 the English Hospital changed its name to the European Hospital. It had twelve beds and four nurses. Mr. N.P. Jewell, M.C., FRCS(I), MD became senior Medical Officer and an operating theatre was built during his time, but was not finished when he left in 1925. He had to perform operations on the verandah, and the chief difficulty was to keep the patient under chloroform owing to the wind blowing the chloroform away very rapidly. The Hospital was then charging shs 35/- per day for a private ward and shs. 24/- per day for other wards (the same fees as the European Hospital in Nairobi). In 1927 the first refrigerator arrived, but it was not until 1935 that there was piped hot water.

In many ways the Hospital was unable to meet the needs of the community it served and one patient, Samuel Cohen, was sufficiently concerned to leave £35,000 in his will for improvements. He died in 1937. He had made his money as a contractor for the Kenya and Uganda Railway but was illiterate and the will was contested by his daughter, by then the wife of a Mombasa architect, on the grounds that the will had not been signed. Fortunately for the Hospital she lost her case. Cohen’s bequest was doubled by a matching pound for pound grant from the Government.

The 1939-1945 world war, however, delayed all plans for improvement, but in 1944 the Government decided that it would have to concentrate its financial resources on medical facilities for the African community and that the European and Asian communities would have to fend for themselves. Associations were to be formed to take over responsibility for the non-African Hospitals. In accordance

with this policy the European Hospital Fund Authority was established and allowed to levy a cess on all Europeans over 18 years old. Out of this cess a sum of money was paid to each European Hospital Association in the country based on bed occupancy. The Mombasa Hospital Association was formed in 1947 and assumed responsibility for the Hospital. In 1951 the Mombasa and Coast European Hospital Association was incorporated under the Companies Act, but the Company changed its name in 1964 to The Mombasa Hospital Association, and it continues to be called by this name to the present day.

The Government had decided to make available a pound for pound aid scheme for capital development and it was this scheme which enabled the first major extension of the Hospital to be undertaken.

In 1947 the Hospital’s £70,000 (Sam Cohen’s bequest and the government’s matching contribution) was augmented by £18,000 secured from the sale of the Hospital’s nursing home (situated on Crown Land) and by a matching £18,000 from government – a total of £106,000 in the bank.

Mrs. Dorothy Hughes, a well known Nairobi architect, was invited to Mombasa on 19th January, 1948 and building of the Hospital began before the end of the year. It was opened on 20th May, 1950 by Sir Charles Mortimer, Commissioner of Lands, and the first Matron was Miss Jane Warden O.B.E. She was to be Matron for 15 years. There were now seventy beds. The cost for adult Europeans paying the annual hospital tax was sh. 5/= per day. For other adult Europeans the charge was sh. 28/= daily, (children sh. 14/=). X-ray facilities were available in the Native Hospital, Makadara.

When the new hospital buildings were completed it was found that the new nursing staff had to be housed outside the hospital grounds as there was no nurses’ accommodation. Accordingly the Mombasa Hospital Association asked for permission to use a small part of Government House to house the nursing staff. With added pressure from the Mombasa Times, the Government, perhaps unwisely, agreed, with the proviso that when the Governor and his family were in

residence, usually for about three weeks in the year, the nurses were to be out of sight as much as possible.

On the very first visit of the Governor (Sir Philip Mitchell, who was Governor of Kenya Colony and Protectorate from 1944 until 1952) one of the nurses appeared on the open verandah in the nude. Mitchell’s mother was not amused. On the next annual visit the Governor’s wife happened to be strolling in the grounds near to where the Hospital’s nurses were housed. One of the sisters, after having washed her hair, walked to the edge of the verandah and threw the dirty water right over Lady Mitchell. Sir Phillip refused to put up with this situation any longer and directed the Public Works Department (PWD) to erect immediately, at Government expense, adequate nurses quarters.

The next development phase was the building of the Maternity Ward in 1960, initially known as the Bibby Wing. Katherine Bibby (1881-1970) and her husband Herbert settled in the East Africa Protectorate during the years of the 1914-1918 world war. In due course they bought a sisal farm in Hoey’s Bridge (between Kitale and Eldoret), and later they purchased a property in Mombasa’s Nyali Estate. Herbert Bibby died in Nyali at the end of 1953, and their only son Arthur died in Kitale early in 1954.

Subsequently Mrs. Bibby, connected by marriage to the family who owned the Bibby Line Group of Liverpool, made a most generous donation to the Hospital, thus enabling the construction of the Bibby Wing. In 1962, in recognition of Mrs. Bibby’s munificence, the Mombasa and Coast European Hospital was renamed the Katherine Bibby Hospital. In 1970, Mrs. Bibby died in a Durban nursing home, aged 89.

By the time Kenya became independent on 12th December, 1963 any racial barriers that remained from the colonial past had been removed but in many quarters there existed the belief that the Katherine Bibby catered mainly for the Europeans. In 1980, as part of the campaign to correct this misapprehension, the name was changed to The Mombasa Hospital.

Throughout the period 1947-1985 the name of Kenneth Adcock was closely associated with the Hospital. He was a founder member of the Mombasa Hospital Association and its Chairman from 1947-1961 when he moved to Nairobi as Managing Director of his Company. While in Nairobi he kept closely in touch with the Hospital's affairs and was its valuable representative at the seat of Government. On retirement in 1968 he returned to Mombasa and in 1974 he resumed his Chairmanship, which at that time included substantial administrative duties, all in an honorary capacity, until retiring through ill health in 1985. He was awarded the O.B.E. in 1978 for his work at the Hospital. His wife Marthe (Barbie) was founder at the library at the Hospital and served from 1947 to 1961 but her long involvement with the Hospital began much earlier, in 1933, when she nursed at the Hospital for a brief period. Mr. and Mrs. Adcock made an outstanding contribution to the Hospital's affairs. Mr. Adcock was elected Honorary Life Member on 4th. May, 1992.

Mr. I. L. (Dick) Roberts, former Managing Director of Bamburi Cement Limited, succeeded Mr. Adcock on 12th. November, 1985. During his ten-year chairmanship he rendered exemplary service to the Hospital.

Under his leadership major building development took place; old equipment was replaced and new equipment acquired; staff morale was boosted and a loss-making hospital became profitable, the surplus being employed to finance major building works. In 1995 a plot adjacent to the Hospital was purchased for seven million shillings. Also in 1995, in recognition of his outstanding service, the Board elected Mr. Roberts to Honorary Life Membership of the Mombasa Hospital Association. In the same year, 1995, Mr. Roberts retired in order to settle in Vancouver, where he died in 2008.

In 1987 it was decided to plan for a major development which it was expected would increase the number of beds and provide better Laboratory, Outpatients, Administrative and Theatre facilities.

The first phase of this was to have been a Children's Ward and a 10- roomed Private Wing. However, as a result of a loan from the Mamujee Brothers Foundation (granted at a time of high interest rates, and with the proviso that the Foundation should have the use of a private room, free of charge, in perpetuity), the project was significantly enlarged with 22 Private Rooms being built instead of 10 and a new Board Room and Lecture Room, with substantial provision for expansion. This project, named the Mamujee Wing, was completed at the end of 1990 and officially opened by the then Minister for Health, the Hon. Mwai Kibaki, E.G.H., M.P., on 1st March, 1991. The Board Room and Lecture Room were subsequently converted into private Doctors' Consulting Rooms.

The Second Phase of the Development Programme comprised Consulting Rooms for nine private Consultants, ten additional private rooms, new Laboratory and Outpatient/Casualty. The Consulting Rooms were completed in March, 1993. The ten private rooms were occupied on 15th October, 1994. The new Outpatient/Casualty and Laboratory were completed on 22nd May, 1995 and officially opened by the Minister for Health, the Hon. Joshua Angatia, E.G.H., M.P., on 16th June, 1995.

Phase Three of the Hospital’s Development Programme commenced in November, 1995 and was completed in April, 1999. It covered the construction of two modern Operating Theatres, a four-bed Intensive Care and a three-bed High Dependency Units equipped with state of the art equipment, Maintenance Workshop, Laundry, Duty Staff Flats, Board and Conference Room, Pharmacy and Drugs Store, Rafiki Centre and a Mortuary.

The third phase also covered the renovation of the old hospital building which was built in the early 1890s and which, since 1997, has been a Gazetted Monument. In addition, major refurbishment of the main and mess kitchens was undertaken, including installation of new equipment, resident doctors’ duty flats, and entrance to the reception area.

The total refurbishment of the General Wards of the Hospital was completed in December, 2006. The roof was replaced, the wards partitioned into individual cubicles to provide privacy for patients, and new nursing stations were constructed. Ceramic floor tiles give the wards a cool and clean appearance as do the acoustic ceilings in all the General Wards, corridors and verandahs.

The next major development, Phase Four, was the building of an ultra-modern maternity wing built at a cost of shs. forty-five million and named after the late wife of Mr. Yusuf Mamujee. The Mamujee Brothers Foundation made a donation of shs fifteen million towards the construction of this project.

The new Maternity Wing has eighteen beds, five are sea-facing private rooms, four semi-private rooms and eight general ward beds. It also has its own operating theatre, a baby nursery, isolation rooms, delivery rooms, a Lamaze/sun room and a doctors’ lounge. The Wing has been equipped with new furniture.

The development of the Hospital never really stops, because the pace of change always increases and the Hospital must keep up.

Other development plans include :

• installation of a lift;

• provision of a four-bed High Dependency Unit;

• setting up of a Renal Dialysis Unit;

• upgrading of the radiology department;

• upgrading of the existing Bibby and Mamujee Private Wards;

• extension of the Mamujee Wing;

• a modern building to be built in the area adjacent to the visitors’ car

park which will include an Out-Patient Department and Consulting

Rooms to accommodate more private hospital-based consultants.