Mercy Ships Restoring Sight in Africa

Nearly 200 hundred people joined in a colourful celebration on the Africa Mercy hospital ship at the end of last month to celebrate the restoration of their sight through Christian healthcare charity Mercy Ships.

The 185 patients and their families praised God as they sang hymns and beat African drums during the Celebrate Sight event. They also offered their thanks to the ship's crew and testified the extent to which their lives had been transformed by their work.

One patient to receive a new life was a fisherman who lost his livelihood when he developed cataracts, while another said he had believed the loss of his eyesight came through a curse placed on him by a neighbour.

Healthcare Services Manager Jean Campbell said, "One of the things we wanted to do was to celebrate the fact they could see again."

The celebration served another purpose, however. Cataracts - a clouding of the lens in the eye - are easily removed but the membrane left in the eye often becomes cloudy, meaning that cataract removal patients are scheduled for post-operative exams. They do not always show up, however, says Eye Team Patient Coordinator Naomi Gillette.

"We wanted to make this a celebration as a little added incentive for them to come back," she said. "It's very expensive for these people to travel and it isn't easy to get around here, so if we say 'we've fixed your eyes, but we want you to come back for an exam', they don't always take it seriously."

It is not only the patients who experience joy at their recovery, however. The hospital staff also share in that joy and enjoy the opportunity to re-discover the meaning of their calling to the medical profession.

"The type of gratitude that they [the patients] express is unreserved, full of joy, and it was an expression to me of the real joy of doing medical care in the first place, the thing you really went into the business for - to impact a life," said Dr Glenn Strauss, the vice president of International Health Care and Programs, who recently returned from the Africa Mercy where he had been performing eye surgeries.

"To see that visibly in the eyes of the patients or seeing them dance down the hall, seeing them hold their hands in the air and sing - those are the type of things that [are] a blessing to me," he shared.

In additional to physical transformation, spiritual healing is also coming to those patients who encounter the gospel in the process of their treatment on board Africa Mercy.

Many of the patients treated by Mercy Ships are social outcasts as a result of severe physical deformities or medical conditions.

Dr Strauss told of women who had not received human touch for nearly a decade because they were chronically incontinent of urine as a result of a child birth injury that was never corrected because they did not have access to medical care in the delivery of their child.

"It is very common for a patient to say that 'the care that you show me, just caring and the human touch I had here, I am convinced that there must be a loving God for this to be possible'," shared Dr Strauss. "That is how they say it. Often times in a different language, but that is what they say. 'This caring touch that I received, it's clear that God is not evil and angry as I have thought. There must be a loving God.'"

Dr Strauss continued: "Well, guess what, that opens up the door to explaining about a loving God. Then we can say 'we are here because He has loved us and it is just the chance for us to share that love with you' and that opens them up wide to the Gospel."

He said that out of six Muslim women suffering from urinary incontinence, four chose to follow Christ as a result of the love they received through Mercy Ships.

Mercy Ship's Africa Mercy is the world's largest non-governmental hospital ship. It set sail for Liberia on its inaugural trip on 4 May and the more than 400 volunteer crew have since been serving some of the poorest people in the country who would not otherwise have access to the medical care needed to cure them of their ailments.

The ship is full equipped with £1m worth of hospital supplies, equipment and materials. In addition to the hospital supplies, essential goods including 3000 toilet rolls (a three month supply), 400 waste paper bins, 26.8 tons of frozen meat and fish (a four month supply), 420kg of coffee courtesy of Starbucks and 4,000kg of breakfast cereal have been loaded.