Focus on the orthopaedic programme

24.07.2009- The orthopaedic programme in Benin is a project entirely sponsored by Swiss funds.

Our orthopaedic programme uses one of six operating rooms onboard the Africa Mercy to provide free orthopaedic surgical care to 185 people in Benin suffering from treatable conditions. The Mercy Ships Orthopaedic Team consults with local hospitals and orthopaedic surgeons to determine the most prevalent cases in the area. It also chooses patients to ease backlogs. Beninese surgeons are invited to visit the ships and at times to work with the Mercy Ships Orthopaedics Team to facilitate an exchange of ideas, techniques, and procedures. Mercy Ships also provides equipment to help local surgeons increase capacity in meeting needs locally.

The team in the operating room consists of two surgeons, an anaesthetist, an operating room nurse, a circulating nurse, and a physician assistant on call. The Africa Mercy offers the surgical team a sterile operating environment with round-the-clock nursing care and state-of-the-art facilities so that patient-care standards are of the highest quality.

Orthopaedic operations are performed by several different orthopaedic surgeons over an eighteen-week period consisting of ten weeks of paediatric surgeries and eight weeks of adult surgeries — a sign that the programme is focusing on assisting children in order to give them a decent future. For the paediatric conditions, the team’s focus is on club feet (either surgery or casting) and tendon releases, including patients who have polio contractures. To address the high rate of road traffic and neglected war injuries, the team performs surgery on chronic injuries, such as non-unions or fractures that have healed improperly.

The types of operations Mercy Ships Orthopaedics offers to those in need are:

• Neglected Trauma – correction of fractures/non-unions with a timeframe of many months to years since the injury. Neglected trauma patients are selected by a screening process coordinated by Mercy Ships staff.
• Paediatric/Congenital Reconstruction – correction of club feet, bowed legs, joint contractures, etc.
• Adult Reconstruction – including amputation revision.
• Hand Surgery – limited selective cases.