In 1853 American Baptist missionaries arrived in the Yoruba town of Ogbomoso and began medical work that would, over the following decades, formalise into Baptist Medical Centre, Ogbomoso. It is now considered one of the oldest continuously operating hospitals in sub-Saharan Africa.
For more than 170 years, the hospital has provided medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and ophthalmology to the people of Oyo State and surrounding regions. It also functions as a training institution, producing generations of Nigerian medical professionals.
Crucially, the hospital was operating before the colonial Nigerian healthcare system existed in any structured form. Like the Methodist school in Badagry a decade earlier, it represents church infrastructure that pre-dated the state.