Page 73 - Protestant Missionary Activity in the Arabian Gulf

and run the hospitals while the government dictated policies

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and provided food, drugs and supplies. In 1973 when the

agreement was to he renegotiated, the Omani government went

one step further and requested that the Mission’s personnel

be dispersed throughout the country and added to the staffs

of various government clinics. For all practical intents

and purposes the medical mission had been broken up and dis-

persed. Unlike the Kuwait closure, however, the Oman agree­

137
ments permitted continuation of other missionary activities.

Of the remaining stations, Bahrain was the most intact

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through the 1960’s and early 1970’s. The orphanage it had

been running was officially closed in 1973 but the hospital

was still functioning, the school was flourishing, and the

bookshop had just opened a new branch at the modern Bahrain

airport and was enlarging and remodeling its downtown branch.

is* The character of the Bahrain mission had changed drastically,

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however, from the early years. The busy hospital, serving
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some 200 inpatients and 150 outpatients daily, patronised

more by the middle and upper class than by the poor Bahraini

laborer and his family, was a self-supporting institution.
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The Mission provided a Chief Medical Officer, and some ad­
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I ministrative assistance, but the operating costs of the

hospital were paid for out of patients’ fees and a subsidy

provided by the Bahrain government, (In 1973 the hospital’s

operational receipts had totaled Bahrain Dinars 158,084 and

it actually recorded a BD 5,000 profit.') The Mission Book­

shop in Bahrain was also a profit-making institution, special-

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