Mercy Ship — a wave of healing

Abstract

Mercy Ships [1] is an international charity that was founded in 1978 as the maritime division of Youth WithA Mission and currently operates as the largest non-governmental hospital ship in the world. The merchant vessel(M/V) Africa Mercy provides free health care, community development projects, community health education,agriculture projects, and palliative care for terminally ill patients. M/V Anastasis (1978–2007, retired) wasa flagship of the four-strong Mercy Ships Fleet which was manned by volunteers and equipped through donationsto bring physical and spiritual healing to the poor and needy in port cities around the world. The purpose of thisarticle is to make known the growing need for help in developing countries and to share my personal experiencewhile working for the Mercy Ships organisation on board the M/V Anastasis.In developing nations, 1,2 billion people live in absolute poverty and have no access to basic health care, cleanwater and sanitation. The “big killers” in our world today (such as infectious and parasitic diseases, lack of basicsanitation, diarrheal diseases, upper respiratory infections, lack of vaccination, malaria, tuberculosis, hungerand hunger-related diseases, death in childbirth) are preventable. Behind every statistics there is a story, a lifeand a person waiting for hope and healing [1]. What little we do to prevent these can have a major impact.