Ng'endo Mwangi was Kenya's first woman physician. She set up clinics serving a very large rural population. She was born in

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and studied in the United States. Born in Kinoo,

Kiambu Kiambu is a town in Kiambu County, Kenya within the Nairobi Metropolitan Region. It is from the capital Nairobi. It has an population of 147,870. It is the capital of the Kiambu County, which bounds the northern border of Nairobi. Other proxi ...

to Rahab Wambui Mwangi and Mwangi Muchiri, she attended Loreto High school Limuru as part of its pioneer class. Mwangi was enabled to study in the United States under the Kennedy Airlifts program and she became the first black African woman to attend Smith College in

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. She graduated from Smith College in 1961, after which she became the first African student at

Albert Einstein College of Medicine Albert Einstein College of Medicine is a research-intensive medical school located in the Morris Park neighborhood of the Bronx in New York City. Founded in 1953, Einstein operates as an independent degree-granting institution as part of t ...

in New York City. Returning to Kenya as a qualified physician, she opened her first practice, the

Athi River Athi River is a town outside Nairobi, Kenya in Machakos County. The town is named after the Athi River, which passes through. It is also known as Mavoko. Athi River hosts the Mavoko Municipal Council and is the headquarters of Mavoko divisio ...

Clinic, in an arid rural region southeast of

Nairobi Nairobi ( ) is the capital and largest city of Kenya. The name is derived from the Maasai phrase ''Enkare Nairobi'', which translates to "place of cool waters", a reference to the Nairobi River which flows through the city. The city proper h ...

where she was the only doctor for over 300,000 Maasai people. In 1987 she founded the Reto Medical Center at Sultan Hamud. Members of the Black Students Alliance at Smith College made the case for additional facilities on campus and, in 1973, th
Mwangi Cultural Center
was established and named in her honor. At that time the center was located at Lilly Hall but it later was moved to the Davis Center at Smith College. Mwangi formally changed her name from Florence Gladwell in 1967. She was awarded an honorary degree by Smith College in 1987. She died of breast cancer in 1989.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mwangi, Ng'endo 1989 deaths Kenyan general practitioners Smith College alumni Kenyan women physicians Albert Einstein College of Medicine alumni 20th-century Kenyan physicians