Kofoworola Abeni Pratt

Early life Pratt was born in Lagos, Nigeria as the second of four children of Augustus Alfred Scott and Elizabeth Omowumi Scott (née Johnson). Her paternal great-grandfather was Chief Taiwo Olowo, a wealthy Yoruba nobleman. She passed the Cambridge senior school certificate in 1933 and then studied to be a teacher at the United Missionary College in Ibadan, after her father discouraged her from her wish to be a nurse. From 1936 to 1940, she taught at the CMS Girls School.

On 3 January 1941, she married Eugene Samuel Oluremi (Olu) Pratt, a pharmacist for the civil service. Her husband was posted in Enugu, Warri and Forcados, so the couple moved around. Their first son died in infancy and their second son, Babatunde, was born in Lagos in 1943. Her husband moved to London the following year to receive British medical qualifications. Their third child, Olufemi, was born in London in 1952. She was active in the West African Students' Union, Pratt passed her preliminary state exams in 1948 and her finals in 1949, qualifying as a State Registered Nurse on 25 November 1949. It was unusual for a married woman to be allowed to take up nursing at that time.

Pratt is often incorrectly cited as being the first qualified black nurse to work for the NHS. and was then repeated. Recent research shows that black nurses worked in the United Kingdom prior to the founding of the NHS in 1948, such as Annie Brewster and Omo-Oba Adenrele Ademola. By 1948 trained black nurses predating Pratt's qualification in 1949, were working for the NHS; however their stories are under-researched and have only recently come to light such as Lulu Coote. Pratt broke through many barriers in her lifetime; she may well have been the first black student at the Nightingale School for Nurses and later became the first Nigerian-born Chief Nursing Officer in Nigeria.

The new hospital was still under construction and Pratt imposed new standards for hygiene, care and nutrition and reformed the administration of the ward.

Pratt was the chief nursing officer to the Federal Ministry of Health in Nigeria and then appointed Commissioner of Health for Lagos in the 1970s. In 1971, Pratt became the President of the National Council of Women's Societies in Nigeria.

In 1973 she was awarded the Florence Nightingale Medal by the International Committee of the Red Cross. The citation described her as a:

The award was presented to her by the President of the Nigerian Red Cross Society, Sir Adetokunbo Ademola, on 21 December 1973. In 1975, she was awarded a chieftaincy title – that of the Iya Ile Agbo of Isheri – for services to Nigeria. In 1979 she was made an honorary fellow of the Royal College of Nursing.

In 1973, she was invited by the military governor of Lagos, Brigadier Mobolaji Johnson,

She died on 18 June 1992.