BNH Hospital

BNH Hospital, formerly the Bangkok Nursing Home, is a hospital located in Bangkok, Thailand.

In the latter years of the 19th century health care in Bangkok was rudimentary and based on traditional Chinese and Thai medicine. Yet Bangkok was growing as a base for British and other foreign companies and an increasing numbers of expatriate employees who demanded familiar western-type health care. Western style clinics and hospitals were unknown and doctors trained in contemporary western medicine were exceptional by their absence.

On 20 August 1897 Bangkok's British community met at the British Legation with Mr George Grenville the resident British Minister and Consul General; this group proposed the establishment of a hospital modeled on contemporary British practice. As was the custom their decision was proposed to the Siamese monarch, King Chulalongkorn, who endorsed it and instructed the Ministry of Education to supervise the establishment of a nursing home exclusively for the care of Bangkok's foreign residents.

The king stipulated that the nursing home should be a non-profit organisation and provided an annual grant of 960 baht.

In the middle of 1898, two British nurses Matron Cawley and the hospital's first nursing sister Miss Hitchens arrived from the UK and by August the hospital was ready to receive its first patients.

Its first home was in temporary rented accommodation a little way from its present location. In the first few years the hospital faced many difficulties, not the least of them financial. There were times when salaries could not be paid, but nurses being what they are, continued their work.

In 1899 the Siamese economy faced a crisis of confidence resulting in an economic slump, making the hospital's precarious financial situation more insecure. But in the year between its opening and the financial crisis the Bangkok Nursing Home had proved its value to the expatriate community, it was clear that it had become a resource that was too valuable to lose.

...
Wikipedia