The mission hospital at Pemangkat (West Kalimantan) was founded by the Roman Catholic congregation Franciscan Sisters of Etten. The hospital was established in 1933 in a small village in the estuarium of the Sambas river. It is situated north of Singkawang, right on the coast. Sambas is a self-governing Landscape with a capital of the same name in the department Singkawang, in the Residency Westerafdeeling van Borneo. Sambas has 68,500 inhabitants of whom 65 Europeans and almost 4,300 Chinese (Gonggryp 1934, 1264).

See Jan Willemsen, Van tentoonstelling naar wereldorganisatie, 94.

See Dutch Missionary Activities, 118-120. Interviews of missionary  workers, an oral history project of the Nijmegen University. KMM file 183 represents the interview with sister M.P. Graumand (Sister Aline). She was from 1936 to 1963 working in the district nursing and outpatient clinic of Sambas in the diocese Pontianak. Aa a nurse in an education congregation she had difficulties in adapting to the customs of the congregation. Besides she had no maternity nurses’notation and still had to do this type of work. She helped many patients and the capacity of polyclinic and hospital permanently grew, She tells about the diseases that were seen (yaws, malaria, navel tetanus) and thje primitive methods, the lack of hygiene with the people and about the different characteristics of the native groups (Malayans, Chinese, Dayaks, Madurese). She baptized many children, sometimes pretending to administer medicaments.