Medical

Blindness

Most of the world’s blind – some 90% – live in impoverished nations where even minimal eye care is inaccessible. Mercy Ships ophthalmic surgeons perform free, critical eye surgeries providing patients renewed sight and improved quality of life. Community-based eye clinics provide basic eye care to treat acute problems and prevent blindness.

Cataracts

Cataracts, although they can be removed by a 10-minute low-cost operation, are responsible for half of all blindness in Africa.

Corneal Growths & Crossed Eyes

Mercy Ships eye surgeons perform procedures to correct pterygium (growths on the cornea of the eye), strabismus (crossed eyes) and eyelid deformities, and also remove painful and/or ugly blind eyes, replacing them with natural appearing prostheses.

Deformities

In the developing world, lack of access to basic health care can have horrific results. Mercy Ships provides relief through free specialized surgeries that save lives, improve quality of life, and restore hope. Patients recuperate on the ship in the hospital wards where they receive individualized and professional attention.

Tumors

Grotesque and disfiguring tumors are not uncommon in the developing countries of Africa. Often benign, the growths begin small, but left untreated, grow to life-threatening size and render their victims social outcasts. In onboard operating rooms, highly skilled surgeons perform thousands of free maxillo-facial surgeries, transforming and saving lives from suffocation and starvation. With each individual life restored, the transformation is no less than miraculous.

Cleft Lip/Palate

Tens of thousands of children are born with cleft lip and/or palate every year. It is a condition easily repaired in the developed world, but babies born in the developing world have little option for corrective surgery. Cleft-lip babies often suffer from malnourishment because they cannot suck or nurse properly. Children who do survive are often rejected. Mercy Ships has restored the smiles of thousands of children and adults.

Congenital Abnormalities

Mercy Ships surgeons perform procedures on children to correct conditions they were born with such as clubfeet and bowed legs, giving them a chance to lead more normal lives.

Burns & Leprosy

For those disabled or disfigured by scarring, burn contractures or the effects of leprosy, specialized plastic surgery procedures can greatly increase mobility and improve quality of life.

Oral Disease

Not seen in the Western world since concentration camps, noma, or cancrum oris, is an infectious disease destroying oro-facial tissues. Predominantly affecting children, the disease advances quickly, spreading to the nose, lips, and cheeks. Though both preventable and treatable, most of those afflicted with the ravenous disease have no access to even basic health care, and thousands die from the condition each year. Those who survive are left with not only disfigurement, but also experience difficulty eating, breathing, and swallowing. Mercy Ships performs numerous reconstructive facial surgeries on noma patients, affording them a chance to lead normal lives, and contributes to the eradication of noma through community health education, dental programs, and water and sanitation teaching. Poverty, malnutrition, poor oral hygiene, lack of sanitation, and diseases, particularly measles, all contribute to the risk of noma.

Dental

Many people in developing countries have never had the privilege of seeing a dentist. Dental help is almost non-existent in much of West Africa, and in other countries Mercy Ships visits, it is unaffordable for the majority of the population.

Extractions & Procedures

Mercy Ships conducts free mobile dental clinics for the poor. Extractions are a common procedure – a last resort after years of poor dental hygiene and the lack of routine dental care. Relieved from infected or rotting teeth, patients often hug dental staff in gratitude. When possible, dentists give fillings and do restorative work to brighten smiles and avoid future extractions.

Oral Hygiene Education

Lack of oral hygiene and untreated tooth decay can lead to much more serious conditions such as noma. Mercy Ships dental teams work to improve oral health in developing countries through dental hygiene education and training of local personnel.

Injuries

Emergency care for the poor in developing nations is inaccessible in most cases, resulting in people who live with ongoing suffering. Often injuries are compounded from lack of adequate treatment and require specialized procedures to provide relief.

Childbirth Injuries

Without access to proper obstetric care, women in developing nations can spend days in agonizing labor before finally delivering a stillborn child. For those who survive, many develop the debilitating condition known as vesico-vaginal fistula (VVF). When prolonged labor or other trauma causes a fistula or hole to form between the bladder and vagina, women find the constant trickle of urine, and sometimes feces, makes normal life impossible. In parts of the world where a woman’s worth lies in her ability to bear children and her usefulness as a wife, their husbands and families often abandon them to suffer alone. Onboard ships and at a dedicated land-based VVF clinic in West Africa, Mercy Ships performs free fistula repair surgeries for affected women. The healed patients are given new outfits and headdresses as symbols of their restored life.

Capacity Building

Medical Training & Mentoring

Mercy Ships builds local capacity through the training of national surgeons and nurses in new techniques and procedures appropriate for their work environments. Health care workers also receive WHO training in disease management to increase effectiveness of local health care efforts.  Local health care workers include medical specialists and generalists, dentists, ophthalmologists, surgeons, doctors, nurses, midwives and traditional birth attendants, community health workers, and medical students.

Medical Tools & Resources

Health care workers in the developing world often lack resources such as medicines, equipment, and specific tools necessary to deliver basic medical care. In addition to providing training and support, Mercy Ships helps meet these practical challenges through the distribution of appropriate medical equipment and resources, along with biomedical training in equipment maintenance and operation.

Medical Infrastructure/Construction

Health care workers in the developing world often lack adequate facilities to provide health care to their communities.  Medical administrators with limited financial resources are often choosing between infrastructure development/ maintenance and paying their workers.  Collaborating with local health care partners, Mercy Ships provides construction and renovation services that increase access to local health care while maximizing the impact of local health care resources.

Community Health Education

Lack of knowledge about basic health care leads to thousands of preventable deaths each day in the developing world. Mercy Ships works with local partners to break the cycle of disease through training in basic health and hygiene, first aid and HIV/AIDS prevention, and community advocacy.

Agriculture

Mercy Ships partners with local agencies to help families and communities learn practical and natural food-producing skills, thereby directly reducing malnutrition and increasing food security. Improved crops and land stewardship result in more income and bring better health to the farmer, his family, and his community. Agriculturalists address topics such as crop rotations and garden planning, seed sowing and saving, natural disease and pest controls, and water conservation and irrigation practices.

Clean Water and Sanitation

Mercy Ships helps to address drinking water problems – the source of most disease in the developing world – by partnering with local agencies and communities to provide training and assistance for digging new wells and repairing existing water systems. Trainees receive basic education in maintenance and care of the wells and pumps. Development teams work with villagers to build latrines, a basic component of a healthy community, and to teach about waterborne diseases and sanitation options.

Leadership Training

As a faith-based charity, Mercy Ships emphasizes a relevant message of lasting societal change based on biblical principles.  Local leaders, teachers, and churches are encouraged to see themselves and their communities as agents of change with the abilities necessary for development. Conferences and workshops offer practical insights and ideas on issues like HIV/AIDS, micro-finance, and community cooperation.

To learn more about Mercy Ships agricultural program and how it benefits local farmers and their communities CLICK HERE.