Facts on Mercy Ships
Purpose
Movies like Blood Diamond highlight the purpose of the global charity Mercy Ships. We take our hospital ships to devastated countries like Sierra Leone and Liberia (the setting of the movie) to help them get back on their feet. We provide them with the health care they can't provide for themselves.
History
Mercy Ships has operated hospital ships in the world's developing nations since 1978, but the vision for this unique ship-based medical charity started more than a decade before.
International President and Founder, Don Stephens, was a teenager when the idea of a hospital ship first struck him. He was 19 when he took a trip with his youth group to the Bahamas. That summer, Hurricane Cleo swept through in what Stephens says was a one-in-a-hundred-year storm that caused massive devastation. Homes were destroyed. People were killed. Stephens' youth group hid in a WWII British Air Force hangar.
After the storm ended, Stephens could not forget the thoughts that had come from those present that it would be a wonderful thing if a ship could come in after the devastation, to provide the necessary medical care and supplies. "The hearing of it challenged me," Stephens says.
In 1978, a deposit of $1 million was paid for a rusty old cruise liner, and work began in earnest to change that liner into the hospital ship Anastasis.
Since that time, Mercy Ships has performed more than 1.7 million services valued at over one billion dollars and impacted more than 1.9 million people as direct beneficiaries.
Description
One of the greatest problems affecting people living in developing nations is the lack of available and affordable health care. Infrastructure is either substandard or simply non-existent. In response to such need Mercy Ships offers a range of health care services free of charge. Highly skilled surgeons on board the ships perform thousands of operations each year to correct disability, disfigurement and blindness. Medical and dental teams travel the country and establish clinics to provide vaccination programs, dental treatment, HIV/AIDS education, and basic health care for those with no access to these facilities. Local community health workers receive training in hygiene, nutrition and disease prevention.
Mercy Ships drills water wells and improves sanitation, builds hospitals, clinics, training facilities and basic housing where none exist. Agricultural projects help replenish livestock in war-torn areas and boost food production. Working in partnership with local people, Mercy Ships empowers communities to help themselves. In all of its programs Mercy Ships provides vocational training as well as meeting immediate needs. The result is a way out of poverty.
The unique feature of the charity is that almost all who serve are volunteers, paying their own way and raise their own support to serve short-term for a few weeks to long-term in a career capacity.
The charity operates only on invitation from and with full co-operation of the nation's government, or the United Nations.
The needs
Throughout West Africa, nations are unable to provide the level of health care, and Mercy Ships seeks to provide such services.
Cranio-facial anomalies, including maxillo-facial trauma, cleft lip and palate, and tissue injury from noma, are prevalent in sub-Saharan Africa. According to the World Health Organisation, the rate of maxillo-facial trauma is increasing along with other forms of trauma from interpersonal violence, motor vehicle accidents and the consequences of war. Cleft lips and palates are the fourth most common birth defect, affecting 1 in 700-1000 live births. Surgical treatment requires a skilled surgeon and post-operative nursing care, expensive equipment and high quality general anesthesia.
The specialty of plastic surgery is another area constrained by a lack of resources across West Africa. The World Health Organisation says accidents involving burn injuries are as high as 39 per 1000. Many hundreds more are left with permanent disabilities each year as a consequence of injuries and poor trauma care. Such accidents commonly occur as a result of open fires used for cooking, heating and lighting.
Obstetric fistula, preventable and treatable, affects the very young and very poor women of Africa, and the problem has been described as the "African Epidemic". It has been estimated that between 50,000 and 100,000 women sustain an obstetric fistula during childbirth each year, and there could be as many as two million women currently living with the problem, many of them in Africa. Usually the result of obstructed labour, coupled with a lack of skilled medical care, obstetric fistula most often leads to permanent incontinence - a continuous leakage of urine and loss of control over bowel movements.
Women suffering from the problem are frequently abandoned by their husbands and become outcasts of local society, left to fend for themselves. Women who remain untreated face a life of shame and isolation, and many face premature death from infection and kidney failure.
While surgery onboard a Mercy Ship can transform the life of a woman with VVF, better training for traditional birth attendants, who may provide the only maternity care a mother receives, may help reduce the long-term risk of VVF. Mercy Ships surgeons carry out repair surgery, while training programs are carried out for traditional birth attendants to help them more readily identify women at risk for complicated deliveries and make appropriate referrals. Local surgeons and nurses also receive training about VVF and RVF.
Also high on the needs list for medical services in West Africa is the provision of ophthalmic surgery. Nearly 80% of blindness is preventable or treatable with medical and surgical intervention. Cataracts are responsible for 45-50% of the blindness. In addition, a growing number of children with treatable vision impairment don't have access to the necessary treatment. Mercy Ships projects address the surgical needs of people with cataracts, strabismus, pterygium and damaged eyes.
Before the ship arrives
Many months of planning and preparation precede each visit by a Mercy Ship to a designated country. Assessments are made by advance teams on the needs that can be provided by volunteers. The charity operates only on invitation from and with full co-operation of the nation's government, or the United Nations as in the case of the past two visits to Liberia, and support from local Non-Government Organisations. Prior to the commencement of field work by volunteers, the advance team finalises details of community development programs, organizes the screening of possible patients for surgery, and confirms arrangements with the government as well as local port and health officials.
Several days after the Mercy Ship arrives in port, a pre-advertised screening day or screening days are held at a large and suitable venue such as a sports stadium or arena. In some countries of West Africa visited by Mercy Ships in recent years as many as five thousand men, women and children have queued for hours for assessment of possible surgery, dependent on the number of pre-determined procedures to be carried out by volunteer surgeons and medical staff.
Surgeons and anesthetists conduct physical examinations while nurses with the help of local translators record patient histories and schedule patients for surgery. Those who receive official appointment cards will return to the Mercy Ship, others who cannot be treated are offered counseling.
The newest Mercy Ship, The Africa Mercy, is currently docked in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The Africa Mercy is a former rail ferry and has been converted into the world's largest non-governmental hospital ship. The ship has six operating theatres, 78 recovery beds, state-of-the-art equipment and has a crew of more than 450 volunteers from about 40 nations around the world
It is expected that as many as 7,000 surgical interventions will be carried out onboard in one year. These would include cataract removal and lens implant, tumour removal, cleft lip and palate reconstruction, orthopaedics and fistula repair. The hospital contains a CT Scan as well as X Ray, laboratory services and a Nikon Coolscope which allows diagnosis from far flung parts of the world almost instantaneously via an onboard satellite communications system.
What has been accomplished?
Since 1978, volunteers serving with Mercy Ships have had an impact on the lives of millions of people in the world's poorest nations. Mercy Ships has provided services valued at more than $800 million, touching the lives of nearly 3 million people. Some of the more notable statistics include:
- Performed more than 56,000 free surgeries such as cleft lip and palate, cataract removal, straightening of crossed-eyes, orthopedic and facial reconstruction, and obstetric fistula repair.
- Treated more than 520,000 people in village medical and dental clinics.
- Educated about 29,000 local health care and workers, who have in turn trained many thousands in primary health care.
- Trained local medical professionals in modern health care techniques.
- Completed more than 1,100 community development projects including construction of schools, clinics, orphanages, water wells and agriculture programs.
- Demonstrated the love of God to people in 70 different nations.
- More than 1,200 volunteers from more than 40 nations serve with Mercy Ships each year.
- Completed over 563 port visits in 53 developing nations and 17 developed nations.
- 15 support offices around the world, including the Australian office at Caloundra, Queensland.