The Mission
Surgeries and Health Care
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 privile
ge 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.
For a full description of how Mercy Ships maintains the sustainability of its programs, read about our Capacity Building programs.
For a look at Program Proposals please contact Resource Development.
