What is Mercy Ships?

Mercy Ships is the world's leading non-governmental ship-based medical organization.

Our goal is to transform the lives of the world's forgotten poor. One by one. Our hospital ships and land-based teams provide primary medical care, relief aid and community support to the most impoverished people on earth, free of charge.

The Africa Mercy, the world’s largest charity hospital ship, is crewed by 450 volunteers from around the world, delivering medical excellence and developmental programs with integrity and compassion.

Target Population

Mercy Ships serves those who are most in need of health care and relief aid in the world's poorest countries. Lack of clean water is one of the most urgent problems facing the developing world today. Thousands of children die annually from easily-correctable birth defects such as cleft palates and lips. Those who survive become outcasts from society, often rejected by their parents and communities and denied even basic schooling. Half of the world's estimated 40 million blind people could see following a one-hour operation.

Methods

    • Life-changing Operations: Surgeons perform free operations onboard, correcting cleft lips and/or palates and crossed eyes, removing tumors and cataracts, straightening club feet, repairing fistulas.

    • Village Clinics: Medical and dental teams establish local clinics in villages for the benefit of people who have no access to health care.

    • Agricultural Projects: Mercy Ships helps communities become self-sufficient in food production through provision of seeds, tools and training.

    • Community Health Education: Teaching primary health care to locals who have a desire to teach and benefit their community multiplies the efforts of Mercy Ships teams.

    • Water & Sanitation: Mercy Ships provides wells and water pumps, assists with latrine construction, and trains villagers in hygiene and sanitation.

    • Construction Projects: Mercy Ships partners with, and trains, local people on each project, empowering communities to help themselves.

But Mercy Ships is more than the programs and the facts and figures.

Mercy Ships is . . .

. . . the mother who hears her daughter say “mama” for the first time after having her cleft palate repaired.

… the father who watches the joy on his son’s face as he discovers the colors of the world following his cataract operation.

… the village that has to bury fewer children because they practice the simple community health teachings.

… the children who can now go to school without fear because their eyes no longer cross or their cleft lips no longer brand them as accursed.

… the young men and women who are learning a valuable trade in the newly-constructed training centre.

… the villagers who no longer have to walk for miles to find their daily water because they now have their own well.

… the teenager who can smile again because her rotting teeth have been repaired.

… the man who can walk again with a custom-made prosthetic limb, after years of hobbling around on crutches because a rebel chopped his leg off with a machete.

… the woman who can have children again and come out of the dark room at the back of a hovel because she couldn’t control the leaking after the five-day labor when her baby died and tore her up inside.

… the grandmother who now sees her grandchildren clearly for the first time following her cataract removal and lens implant.

… the never-ending story of a God of compassion and faithfulness, who works through a people who follow His mandate to act justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with their God.

THIS is MERCY SHIPS.