Over the past three years, thousands of people have climbed up and down the gangway of the Global Mercy™ while she docked in Freetown, Sierra Leone. Some arrived seeking surgery for conditions that had kept them from school, work, or daily life. Healthcare...
“Can’t you really see me, Grandma?” After Delphine lost her sight, her three-year-old grandson often asked her the question. When they walked together, he would gently take her hand and guide her forward. At mealtimes, her daughter, Noronette, carefully placed food in...
Somewhere in the world right now, a person has gone blind from a condition that a 20-minute operation could fix. Cataracts remain the single leading cause of reversible vision loss globally, yet roughly half of all people who need cataract surgery still can't access...
Five billion people around the world lack access to safe, timely surgical care. That figure, drawn from the Lancet Commission on Global Surgery, translates to roughly 18.6 million preventable deaths every year. Hospital ships are one of the more practical answers to...
Most Australians have never heard of obstetric fistula. Yet this serious childbirth injury affects thousands of women across parts of Africa and other low-resource regions every year. It develops when prolonged, obstructed labour goes without medical intervention, and...
Identical Twin Nurses have Patients Seeing Double on Hospital Ship in Madagascar Identical twin nurses from Germany — who volunteer on board the Africa Mercy® and work together at the same hospital in Switzerland — often have patients thinking they are seeing double....