God's People Series Launches With Mercy Ships

Saturday the 1st of May marked our first global event as a new committee! At our online Justice Brunch, we began a new series of talks called God’s People. This series is a chance to awaken us specifically to the healthcare inequality and poverty occurring across the world and how we can support organisations working on the ground to change that.

For our first talk we were joined by the lovely Ruth Walne, a speaker for the charity Mercy Ships, who has worked for them for several years as a nurse and orthopaedic technician. Mercy Ships is a Christian charity that deploys hospital ships to developing African countries to provide vital free healthcare to those who desperately need it. They also look at implementing long term solutions that tackle the root of the healthcare problem by educating and training up individuals in those countries to carry on the work for themselves.

Ruth covered so much inspiring content in her talk that is almost too much to go into! However, I am going to try and highlight some of the best bits below. If you would like to listen to the talk in full, please get in contact with a member of the committee to receive a link to the recorded session.

Founder Don Deyon had a vision from God, whilst working with YWAM, of a white ship serving the forgotten poor and 42 years on this has materialised into the Africa Mercy ship, which will soon be joined by the almost completed Global Mercy. The Africa Mercy serves the Western coast of Africa, with the aim of bringing hope and healing to the world’s forgotten poor.

The reason they go?

2 out of 3 of the world’s population don’t have access to appropriate surgical care. Care that is safe, affordable and timely. This is not just for medical emergencies but is also for conditions like HIV/AIDS, Malaria and other tropical diseases. Due to this lack of surgery 18 million people die every year, this is the total of population of London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dublin, Swansea, Belfast and Cardiff combined. Every year.

Whenever Mercy Ships decides to travel to a particular country, they don’t just roll up unannounced, the charity implements something called a five-year country engagement plan:

Year 1: Is the protocol signing, they have to be invited by the country and must agree to certain terms of what they will do whilst there. The Country also has to prepare for their arrival and ensure the boat will have all the resources it needs e.g., suitable dock space and a clean water supply.

Year 2: They assess the needs of the country. What specialist clinics and facilities do they already have? They also send out a team to advertise and get the message out to as many remote communities as possible so that the maximum number of people are aware that the ship is coming.

Year 3: The ship is deployed and docked in a port of the country for 10 months. This is when the crew of the ship relieve the immediate medical needs of the patients that come to them. They carry out surgeries onboard the ship in one of their 5 operating theatres.

Year 4: Teams will go back in the following year, after the departure of the ship, to check that any training initiated the previous year in teaching native individuals to provide this clinical care themselves is still in progress.

Year 5: A report is written analysing what impact Mercy Ships has had on the country and evaluate how effective their endeavours were.

Much of the work of Mercy Ships is focused on eradicating diseases of poverty such as vitamin D deficiencies resulting in rickets, congenital problems, dietary problems, severe childhood burns and cleft lip and palette. Many of these problems are easily treatable but these communities just don’t have access to the care they need.

Ruth shared many inspiring stories of people that she has helped in her time onboard, but this story was particularly moving...

Didimbi was a young girl who travelled over 100 miles with her Grandmother to board Mercy Ships. She had bent bow legs that meant she was in constant pain when trying to stand on them. She went into the operation perfectly healthy apart from her orthopaedic issues, unfortunately under anaesthetic she began to deteriorate after only one leg had been altered. Her SATs were dreadful and the whole team of anaesthetists worked on her for about 2 hours, trying everything they could think of to try to get her to respond. She was dying. The head anaesthetist left the room crying as she didn’t know what else to do, so the crew did the only thing they could do: pray.

An announcement went out over the tannoid of the ship asking everyone aboard to stop what they were doing and pray for healing for this little girl. Everybody stopped where they were and started praying. In about 5 minutes of this announcement going out, for some reason this girl began to improve. Her SATs came up and without any further treatment she started to improve. The team were able to finish the operation and when Ruth went to find her in the recovery ward she was sat up and asking for a drink! Which is very rare for a child following such a big surgery.

By training and mentoring local professionals, providing medical tools and resources and building better medical facilities, the charity is able to improve the healthcare of the country for the long-term. For instance, in Guinea, they trained up native dentists whilst providing care in the country so that they can carry on the same care after the ship has left. They also provided them with an X-ray machine to allow them to quickly catch facial tumours (ameloblastomas) so that the local dentists are able to treat them when they are still small.

Leaving behind a legacy of training and education behind is just as fundamental to Mercy Ships’ work as helping children like Didimbi.

By training and mentoring local professionals, providing medical tools and resources and building better medical facilities, the charity is able to improve the healthcare of the country for the long-term. For instance, in Guinea, they trained up native dentists whilst providing care in the country so that they can carry on the same care after the ship has left. They also provided them with an X-ray machine to allow them to quickly catch facial tumours (ameloblastoma) so that the local dentists are able to treat them when they are still small.

Mercy Ships in numbers:

1 Ship The Africa Mercy, soon to be joined by the new Global Mercy!

5 Operating Theatres on the Africa Mercy

82 Ward Beds

200 different types of jobs are available (only half of which are medical)

10 months in the port of each country they visit

1,300 volunteers involved annually from over 40 different countries

So what can we do to support Mercy Ships?

Give: a gift of money will help support the charity in delivering free, life-changing surgery.

Go: They need volunteers! For lots of different roles that aren’t just medical.

Get Involved: Help spread the message of Mercy Ships & raise funds.

Pray: prayer is such an important tool for lifting up the work of Mercy Ships up to God and blessing and protecting the volunteers and patients.

You could tell how passionate Ruth was about their work in the way she recounted her experiences, it left us all feeling inspired about how we could get involved with Mercy Ships and play a part in changing the lives of others across the globe.

There is too much to mention in just one post, but I would really recommend you look at their website and ways in which to support their amazing work. Before I risk rambling on any more I will leave you with this quote that particularly stuck with me from the talk….

‘We can’t change the whole world… but we can change the whole world for individuals one life at a time.’

Dr. Gary Parker Chief Medical Officer for Mercy Ships