Page 70 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

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had been a temporary deficit in 1965 due to personnel disloca­
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i tions and mismanagement following the sudden death of Dr. G-erald
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Nykerk and the abrupt departure of the Chief Medical Officer,

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Dr. lewis Scudder, due to serious illness. Upon Dr. Scudder’s

retvirn in late 1966, however, the hospital had quickly pulled

itself back into a self-supporting financial status. In 1964
m the hospital had had a record year for number of patients

treated and had not only been able to pay for its own operating

expenses but even been able to subsidize medical work in Bah-
130
rain and Muscat. Secondly it was clear that the hospital

was popular with the Kuwaiti people and still received more

patients than ever despite the competition from the compre­

hensive state medical system. Even the Kuwait government had

to make a puzzled admission of the hospital’s popularity in

one of its publications in 1963:

nIt is a tribute to the American hospital that
todaj^when Kuwait has a health service which is second
to none in the world, there are still 300 visits a day
to the hospital’s outpatient department." 131

Thus the New York Board’s official justification for the closure,

that the hospital was no longer necessary and could no longer

compete with existing state medical services was overstated.

Some personal disagreements about hospital operation procedures

may have exacerbated New York-field relations, but this was
Reading between
not sufficient reason for closure either,

the lines of cautious documents, it appears that New York

felt that even if the hospital was able to support itself for

a while and did have a popular following, it was no longer

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