Switzerland
Bringing Hope and Healing
Mercy Ships provides transformational health care, relief aid, community development and sustainable change in developing nations to meet the immediate as well as the long-term needs of the poor.
Operating a hospital ship crewed by volunteers, serving field locations around the world, Mercy Ships works to increase the capacity of each host nation to serve the dire needs of the local population. Mercy Ships freely serves the poor without regard to race, gender or religion.
In addition to the thousands of free specialized surgeries offered onboard the ships, community development projects take place in the surrounding villages in collaboration with local partners. These sustainable programs target areas of health, education, water and agriculture.
Mercy Ships statistics
Since 1978, Mercy Ships has provided services in developing nations valued at more than 808 million US$, including the following:
- performed more than 47,000 life-changing operations such as cleft lip and palate repair, cataract removal, orthopaedic procedures, facial reconstruction and obstetric fistula repair.
- treated over 422,120 patients in village clinics with more than 456,400 medical procedures performed.
- treated over 95,800 dental patients with more than 228,100 dental procedures performed.
- taught 125,800 local people in basic health care.
- trained over 15,300 local health-care professionals who have in turn trained many others.
- completed over 1,085 community development projects focusing on water and sanitation, education, infrastructure development and agriculture.
