Mercy Ships

                           'Mercy' Ships or 'Hospital' Ships 

Jane Bradshaw a fellow Rotarian, visited Whitley Bay Rotary earlier this week to tell us about the Rotary International Foundation’s worldwide support for ‘Mercy Ships’.
The first African Mercy Ship came to dock in the northeast in early 2000 when Jane first became involved with this worldwide organisation.

However, it was in 1978 when an American couple, Don & Deyon Stephens founded the first Mercy Ship by purchasing a scrap liner and transforming it into a floating hospital. It had three operating theatres, dentists, x-ray facilities, doctors and nurses etc. and all these adults lived continuously on the ship for ten years. At the time, half the world’s population lived within 100 miles of a port. This means that a ship could dock and then get medical supervision to third world countries and support for local communities.

In essence, Mercy Ships is a charity, based on Christian principles with volunteers, who are religious or not, but welcomed without discrimination.
Many of the crew/staff are volunteers and will often pay for their own food and drink, with many medics taking a sabbatical for a tour of duty without pay!!!
It is estimated that around 17 million people across the world die every year as they have no access to safe and affordable surgery, so Mercy Ships are providing three essential elements:_

• Providing direct medical and surgical care
• Training local people in an area to give sustainable and palliative care
• Making general medical facilities accessible and available whilst providing training.

As the ships sail, they provide safe, affordable medical care in whatever location they are based. For instance, 93% of people in sub-Sahara Africa can’t access medicine, surgery, x-rays, opticians, dentists, etc. – so, the medical care we take for granted every day is provided on board these ships for the local community where they are docked.
The last ship to go into service in 2023 was Global Mercy which was built as a specially designed hospital ship including six medical theatres, and CT scanners etc. and, with a crew of 450, many of whom are local to any given area, plus a host of medical staff, doctors, nurses etc.

To date the ships have worked in 55 countries and benefited 2.84 million people at a cost of four million dollars a year for each ship.