Skills shared today can reach patients for years to come.
Mercy Ships works alongside African healthcare professionals, universities and governments through training, mentoring and long-term partnerships that help strengthen safe surgical care — during a field service and long after our ships leave.
on the right: icon + Only 6% of the world's surgical procedures take place in the poorest countries, where more than one-third of the world's population lives.
Safe surgery depends on skilled people and strong healthcare systems. Mercy Ships works alongside African healthcare professionals, universities and governments to strengthen expertise, share knowledge and support surgical care that can continue long after our ships leave.
Knowledge shared today can keep making a difference tomorrow.
From learning side by side and building practical skills to deepening specialist expertise and passing knowledge on, healthcare professionals strengthen skills they can use with their own patients — and share with colleagues and future generations.
Training is part of a bigger picture. Healthcare professionals also need strong teams, effective patient pathways, supportive leadership and healthcare systems that allow their expertise to grow. That's why Mercy Ships works alongside healthcare professionals, hospitals, universities and governments to support locally identified priorities and strengthen surgical care for the long term.
Ever-increasing numbers of people receive the timely surgical care they need to flourish.
Lasting change starts with local leadership. Hear from African leaders about how collaboration with Mercy Ships supports healthcare professionals, patients and stronger surgical care for the future.
“We would like to express our appreciation to Mercy Ships for accepting to come and offer free medical care to the Guinean population. We congratulate the crew of the Africa Mercy and wish them a pleasant stay in our country.”
– Doctor Edouard Ngnankoye LAMA, Minister of State/Minister of Health, Guinea
“For all the things that we have done to ourselves as a people, your response is one of love; one that helps us to see a different way, to look at ourselves with a different value. You enable many of our people to live again, to become part of society in a normal way – no longer an object of pity, no longer silenced by their handicap, no longer ashamed of their condition. We thank you.”
– Her Excellency Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Former President, Liberia
“I address all my thanks and gratitude on behalf of all of Benin to the Mercy Ships team for so many sufferings relieved, so many diseases healed and so many patients whose conditions are improving. I express my encouragement to your team for the extraordinary work that is done to give joy of living to our fellow citizens. Long life to Mercy Ships.”
– Patrice Talon, President de la Republic of Benin
Behind every number are healthcare professionals applying their skills, sharing knowledge and caring for future patients.
+122.000
Surgical procedures since 1978
Surgeons, anaesthesia providers, ward and theatre nurses, dental professionals, sterile processing staff and biomedical technicians.
Surgery depends on all of them. A missing steriliser technician closes an operating room as effectively as a missing surgeon, which is why training is not limited to clinicians.
Some training is course-based and delivered in the ship's training facilities, including simulation before working with patients.
Most of what changes practice is mentoring: a local surgeon operating alongside a visiting specialist, case after case, over weeks. Mentoring continues in local hospitals as well as on board, because competence has to hold in the room where the clinician actually works.
The programmes that matter most produce instructors. A surgeon who can teach the next cohort multiplies the effect long after the ship has gone, and that multiplication is the whole strategy rather than a bonus.
African colleges, universities and surgical training programmes already train surgeons and have done so for decades. The constraint is capacity - training posts, supervised operating time, equipment and faculty - not the absence of a system.
Mercy Ships works with those institutions rather than building a parallel one. An organisation that creates its own separate training system creates dependence on itself.
Renovating and equipping local surgical, dental and teaching facilities is part of the same work. Training people to use equipment that their hospital does not have would achieve very little.
Not by how many operations a ship performed, but by whether there are more qualified healthcare professionals practising in the country afterwards than before.
It is a harder thing to photograph than surgery, and it is the part most likely to still be producing results in twenty years.
For someone waiting for care, surgery can open the door to a healthier future. Discover how Mercy Ships provides free, specialized surgery and supports patients throughout their journey to healing.
Mercy Ships works alongside African healthcare professionals through clinical mentoring, practical courses, simulation, specialist education and train-the-trainer programs.
Mercy Ships combines training with long-term partnerships involving healthcare professionals, hospitals, universities and governments, helping strengthen the people, expertise and systems that safe surgical care depends on.
Yes. Skills gained through training remain with healthcare professionals, while some education and institutional partnerships continue beyond individual field services.
Mercy Ships works with African partners to strengthen healthcare expertise, education, clinical environments and surgical systems based on locally identified priorities.
