Kenneth Buxton was a former medical officer for the Church Missionary Society at Ruanda Mission, Ibuye, Burundi, and subsequently medical superintendent of Mildmay Mission Hospital, Bethnal Green, London. He was born in Hertfordshire, on 19 July 1909. His father, Leonard Buxton, was the grandson of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, the co-worker of Wilberforce in the abolition of the slave trade, and was the vicar of North Mimms. His mother, Kathleen Wingfield-Digby, was the daughter of a landowner at Coleshill House, near Birmingham. Kenneth was educated at Charterhouse, from which he won an exhibition to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he gained a first in the natural science tripos. He did his clinical studies at St Thomas's, where he became house surgeon and casualty officer. After obtaining his FRCS in 1935, he went to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, as a missionary to found a new medical school. However, the Italian invasion meant that he was evacuated to Aden, together with his wife and baby son, and then returned to England, along with the exiled Emperor Haile Selassie. In 1938, he returned to Africa, to work in Burundi with the Ruanda mission. With few resources, he designed, built and organised a hospital, training young Africans as nurses and dressers. A maternity unit and a nurse training school (which had government recognition) were later added. As well as having to deal with a remarkable range of medical and surgical conditions almost single-handed, Kenneth also worked as the architect, building instructor, engineer and mechanic. During the second world war, Kenneth offered to join the British Army, along with the other missionaries in the country. They were requested to remain by the British government, in case there was a German invasion of East Africa. He returned home briefly in 1948 with his family. He returned to England for good in 1954 and took up the post of medical superintendent of Mildmay Mission Hospital in London's East End. While working at the hospital, he initiated and was involved in implementing many changes, including the building of an extension and a new residential wing for nurses. The hospital was closed in 1982 by the regional hospital board, but reopened three years later as a community hospital with charitable trust status. It later became the first hospital to offer a dedicated service for people with AIDS. Kenneth was chairman of the council of the Ruanda Mission from 1965 to 1974 and kept up his interest in Burundi. He married in 1935, Agnes Bragg, daughter of T Bragg, a doctor. They had two sons, of whom the elder (Paul) became a physician in Victoria, Canada. Of their two daughters, the eldest was a nurse at St Thomas's. There are nine grandchildren and five great-grandchildren. Kenneth died at the age of 92, on 14 November 2001.