Two-thirds of the world’s population cannot get access to safe surgery when they need it. As a result, a staggering 16.9 million people around the world die every year from conditions requiring surgical care. It’s that unmet need that motivated Katie Henderson, a...
“Every once in a while, my grandpa – a schoolteacher – would get a pliers and yank out someone’s aching tooth,” says Dr. David Ugai, recounting his grandparents’ experience as missionaries in present day Zimbabwe. “The funny thing is, my grandma never got gifts for...
Eric Diatta’s phone never stops ringing. On the other end of the line, it could be any one of the hundreds of Mercy Ships patients who have come to rely on him. Eric is from the southern part of Senegal and speaks five languages. In 2019, he met Mercy Ships Hospital...
“The party continues.” This is the oft-heard catchphrase of Lawrence Adjei, the volunteer bosun on the Global Mercy. Lawrence commands the deck department on the newest Mercy Ships vessel, currently based in Antwerp, Belgium, during its hospital equipping. Lawrence’s...
Deb Duff’s journey as a Mercy Ships volunteer has been full of unpredictable starts and stops. In fact, it started with a stop, when she found out her job in Australia was going to be eliminated. Deb had been working for 25 years, and she’d been thinking about taking...
Embarking on a volunteer journey with Mercy Ships fulfilled a lifelong dream for Deddy, an operating theatre nurse from the Netherlands. “I always wanted to go to Africa since I was little. I had already told my parents, ‘I want to be a nurse,’” she said. Coming on...