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Name: SHAW, Alma Downes (Dr.)

Nee: dau of Rev. Archibald Downes Shaw

Birth Date: 1893 Kew Gardens

First Date: 1926

Profession: Medical doctor

Area: Uganda, Mombasa, Kikuyu, Kaloleni

Book Reference: Foster

General Information:

Foster - Her father, Rev Archibald Downes-Shaw, had been a CMS Missionary and together with Binns had built for GBP £1500, St Paul's Church, Rabai where they had both worked during 1885-7. She started as a Missionary with CMS in 1926. For the first 5 years she worked with Dr Sir Albert Cook at Mengo Hospital in Uganda and then she worked at Ngora Hospital in Uganda's Eastern Province. At last she moved to Kenya to follow in her father's footsteps. She bought a bicycle and rented a room and set up an out-patients' clinic in Mombasa. Next she established an in-patients' facility with 2 beds.
Eventually she had, in Macupa Road, 3 flats and a 28 bed unit. In 1934 she was lent to the Church of Scotland Mission for 9 months at Kikuyu Hospital. Then she was for 22 years working at the CMS Hospital at Kaloleni. She was much noted for her Medical skill and for her Christian evangelistic work as well as for making many improvements such as a Nurses' home, new wards, a sanitary block etc. In 1957 she was back in Mombasa. She again set up Medical Missionary work - "Ashma Dharma" (door of hope). On 20th March 1960 she retired to England, but within a few months answered an urgent call for a doctor in Nigeria. She retired finally to Tanganyika in 1965

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