Kotiam - Goiter Removal
- Standing outside the world’s largest non-governmental hospital ship.
- Kotiam lived with a painful and disfiguring goiter for 20 years.
- Kotiam in fine form after his operation.
20 Years of Pain & Anguish
Kotiam sits on a bed in a ward onboard the world’s largest non-governmental hospital ship, the Africa Mercy. The goiter that filled his neck is gone, having been skilfully removed by surgeons the previous day.
“I come from a poor family. I had to sell my goat to get money so I could travel here to the ship. It was not easy to do,” he says. “But when I saw the ship, it was like meeting a brother that I had not seen for years.”
This is an amazing story of a man persevering. The growth on Kotiam’s neck had been forming for 20 years, leaving him in excruciating pain and unable to farm his land properly. As a result, his family rarely had enough to eat and his children could not attend school regularly.
News of Mercy Ships spreads
One day news came to Kotiam’s village that doctors from other lands had come to offer free surgeries to people with sicknesses and conditions much like his. Kotiam travelled to the region where he thought the doctors worked.
By the time he arrived, he found only an empty building littered with flyers and posters. Bewildered, he picked up a flyer to see a picture of a woman with a swollen neck like his – and next to it, a picture of the same woman with a normal neck. Kotiam immediately found a telephone to call the number on the flyer. The rest is history!
