The Global Mercy™ is in Sierra Leone for a Second Field Service
In August, the world’s largest civilian hospital ship, the Global Mercy™, was welcomed back to Freetown in a partnership between international charity Mercy Ships and the Ministry of Health. In this field service, Mercy Ships will continue to provide long-awaited, often lifesaving surgical care as well as educational opportunities for the nation’s healthcare professionals. The NGO will serve the residents of this beautiful country until the second quarter of 2025. Stay tuned!
Current Activities
Madagascar & Sierra Leone in 2024
Meet some of our Canadian volunteers serving onboard our hospital ships:
Madagascar
The Africa Mercy is currently docked in Toamasina, Madagascar. Over the past ten months, the hospital ship has provided hundreds of surgeries across a range of specialties, including general, maxillofacial, ophthalmic, orthopedic, plastic, and pediatric care. We've also performed over 1,440 dental procedures and trained nearly 40 healthcare professionals. In addition, we've welcomed more than 800 volunteers from 46 nations and over 250 Malagasy day crew members!
While there is so much work to be done to continue surgeries, our crew members don’t stop – they are still finding time to dedicate to other causes on the ground, like the Bethany Project! (more details to come)
Sierra Leone
The newest and largest vessel in the Mercy Ships fleet departed Sierra Leone in June after spending the previous 10 months performing 1,979 life-changing surgeries and training 145 healthcare professionals on board.
This year, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Mercy Ships selected patients in 12 locations across Sierra Leone for the upcoming field service, ensuring that people from diverse regions of the country can access the care they need on board. In the next months, the Global Mercy will perform over 1,400 free surgeries.
Darryl Anderson, commented from Mercy Ships Canada’s national office in Victoria, BC. “I am extremely proud of the role that Canadian volunteers play as part of an international team from over 60 countries worldwide.” Anderson continued “The wide range of skills from our volunteers speaks to the generosity of spirit that characterizes Mercy Ships Canada volunteers.”
Mercy Ships’ Education, Training, and Advocacy (ETA) department is supporting a new program aimed at reducing surgical infection rates at Connaught Hospital in Freetown, Sierra Leone. As a component of its Safer Surgery program, 20 nurses are attending a two-week, hands-on training about sterilization processes. Mercy Ships has partnered with the Sterile Processing Education Charitable Trust (SPECT) to administer the training.
Participants learned what to do at different stages, from how to prepare a cleaning station to the correct disposal of the dirty water, ensuring that tools would not be contaminated after they had been cleaned.
Standby for more information on this exciting development.
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