Mercy Ships. Teaching about malaria. Would you volunteer?

As mentioned in a previous post, on 25th October Her Royal Highness The Princess Royal, accompanied by her husband, Vice Admiral Sir Timothy Laurence, visited the world’s largest charity hospital ship in Sierra Leone as part of her tour of the country.  The 16,000 tonne Africa Mercy is in its eighth month of a 10-month field service in Sierra Leone, a country the charity has visited seven times over the last 19 years providing free medical care and humanitarian aid.  

Since February, Mercy Ships volunteer medical teams in Sierra Leone have performed more than 2,700 surgeries and 28,700 dental procedures and worked extensively with the Ministry of Health and local hospitals to focus on capacity building and the training of local doctors, anaesthetists, nurses and other health professionals.

5 year old Emmanuel who had surgery for a cleft lip.



I noticed this video because the teaching they are doing on malaria is very similar to the way we do it and it emphasises the importance of mosquito nets (with a small boy acting as the insect!). The government has begun to distribute nets for free and many of the community we serve have them. The teaching is important because people do not always use them correctly. Some wrap the net around them, which allows the insects to reach their skin. Some have used the nets for fishing!

Much of the video invites people to volunteer to work with Mercy Ships. This blog is read in many countries and some of my readers may want to do this.  The volunteer crew pay their own airfare and crew fees to cover the cost of their time on board.