Alma Downes Shaw

Alma Downes Shaw (22 September 1893 – 14 December 1969) was an English medical missionary doctor of the Church Missionary Society who founded and built the Mombasa Hospital for Women and Children. She subsequently worked at the Church Missionary Society Hospital at Kaloleni for 22 years. She initiated medical services for the Indian population living in Kenya. She was not just known for her medical and religious work, but also for making improvements to areas like a "nurses' home, new wards, a sanitary block, etc."

Prior to her missionary work, Shaw advocated for women to be permitted to study medicine alongside their male counterparts at The London Hospital Medical College in 1922.

Biography Alma Downes Shaw was born in Kew, London Borough of Richmond upon Thames, Greater London, England. Shaw was the daughter of Rev. Archibald Downes Shaw her father, and Alice Shaw, her mother.

Additional work in Kenya After this, she had a reprieve from the Kenya Mission and was lent to the Church of Scotland Mission. She worked at the Kikuyu Hospital for 9 months. This did not last very long, and she then moved to the CMS hospital in Kaloleni, Kenya. For 22 years, she gained popularity for her medical skill and her evangelistic work. While in Kenya, she also set up nurses' homes, new wards, sanitary blocks, and other improvements to the community.

In 1957, she moved back to Mombasa, where she first started, to continue her medical missionary work.

Work in Nigeria and Tanganyika She planned to retire on 20 March 1960 and move back to England. However, she was alerted to the need for a doctor in Nigeria and could not contain herself. She moved among hospitals in Africa in places such as Nigeria, Kenya and Tanganyika, where she finally retired.

She died on 14 December 1969, in Mombasa, Kenya.