Dr. Anna Sarah Kugler (19 April 1856 – 26 July 1930) was the first medical missionary of the Evangelical Lutheran General Synod of the United States of North America.

[3] She decided to apply for sponsorship to the Woman's Home and Foreign Missionary Society of the General Synod of the Lutheran Church in America.

The Synod board said it was "not yet ready to undertake work of this kind" (i.e., medical mission) but was willing to send her to India as a teacher for Muslim women living in harems.

Her work was hampered by limitations of caste and race - as a white woman she was regarded as "unclean" by high-caste Hindus - but she said, "it was all in the way of opening up the path for those who came later.

When she returned to India she was able to purchase an 18-acre plot of land with the donations generated by the goodwill she had earned and also with help from her fellow missionaries who collected money for her.

A dispensary was opened on the land in February 1893, and later that year the cornerstone for the American Evangelical Lutheran Mission Hospital was laid.

While on furlough in the United States in 1928, she wrote Guntur Mission Hospital, an autobiography intended as a guide to future medical missionaries.