The First Climate team wishes you a Merry Christmas and a good start to the New Year.
We look forward to continuing to support you in your commitment to climate action in 2024.
Floating healthcare centers provide charitable help in Africa – on board and on land
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The Christian charitable organization Mercy Ships uses specially equipped hospital ships to bring cutting-edge medical aid to the most vulnerable countries across the globe at no charge. For these efforts, the focus point is on the African continent. Around 93% of the population in West and Sub-Saharan Africa cannot receive surgical treatment, because they lack the financial means or their homes are far away from medical care centers. Improving medical care and the living conditions of local people is what perpetually drives the non-profit organization.
How Mercy Ships performs charitable deeds
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Mercy Ships, founded in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1978, currently operates in 16 countries, including Switzerland, Germany and port cities across Africa. Since then, the hospital ships and the many volunteers have been deployed in more than 70 countries worldwide – over 2.8 million people have benefited from the organization's activities to date. The special ships in the Mercy Ships fleet, the Africa Mercy and the Global Mercy, which entered service in 2022, are the largest of their kind in the world. Alone, the fleet’s newest ship is estimated to have helped over 150,000 people through life-changing operations. The ships are completely self-sufficient, ensuring that clean water, reliable technical equipment, and a stable power supply are always accessible on board.
Every year, more than 1,000 volunteers from over 60 countries are involved with Mercy Ships – including specialists in surgery and dentistry, nursing, health education, nautical science and engineering. And with remarkable success: as an example, since 1978, more than 108,000 surgical operations have been performed ̶ the number amounts to around 2,000 such operations every year. Mercy Ships' activities also include training a diverse range of doctors and specialists from other professional groups.
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The organization also collaborates with local authorities and governments within the respective host countries as well as various physicians and the World Health Organization (WHO) to make Africa's medical framework more sustainable and fundamentally improve the healthcare system as part of infrastructure projects and specially designed programs.
Donation supports ongoing improvements to African healthcare
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With this year's Christmas donation, we wish to contribute to the important international work of Mercy Ships and share financial resources with regions in Africa that need them most. In this way, we hope to support the Mercy Ships team's efforts in the areas of medical care and project work for sustainable infrastructure development.
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Find out more about Mercy Ships' mission or immerse yourself in the personal stories of the patients whose lives have been transformed by the work of Mercy Ships:
© Cor Kuyvenhoven / Ghost Diving
© Cor Kuyvenhoven / Ghost Diving
Photo Credit: ©Mercy Ships