In April, InterSurgeon were delighted to speak to Lucile Arthaud from Mercy Ships who are co-hosting a fantastic side event at the WHA meeting in Geneva this month on Wednesday 21st May at 1700 – 2000 at the Warwick Hotel. She spoke to us about Mercy Ships, this wonderful side event and joining InterSurgeon.
Mercy Ships- beginning and now
Since 1978, Mercy Ships has been running missions across 55 countries with their focus in Sub Saharan Africa. They currently have two floating hospitals in action; Africa Mercy and Global Mercy and are always looking for volunteers; “The idea is to have only professional workers. We don’t take trainees. People need to be working for more than three years and they shouldn’t be retired… We have teachers, we have cooks, we have bakers, we have like all the electricians, mechanicians. So it’s not only surgery. We are looking for every kind of volunteer.”
Mercy Ships completes 1000s of operations aboard their ships and partners with countries to offer training, mentorship and infrastructure renovation. In 2024 they performed 4746 surgical procedures and 13,312 dental procedures. In addition, they trained a total of 923 healthcare professionals across 8 African Nations in both short- and long-term medical education and training.1 They are instrumental in raising awareness of global surgery; “We are really active in congresses and we try to do events to raise attention and to be active.”
Mercy Ships and Operation Smile Side event
Co-hosting this side event with Operation Smile, the event is entitled “Strengthening Health Systems for Universal Health Coverage: Implementing Surgical Care”. It aims to bring together voices from healthcare professional from LMICs to highlight the importance of proper funding and support for global surgery and it’s community. Lucile says “[Our event is] really to raise the voice of the African health care worker, and expert on global surgery. And globally, it’s to make the multilaterals such as WHO to take into account global surgery more because two thirds of the world that don’t have access to surgery.”
With the Lancet Commission due to publish there 10year review on their first global surgery publication, Lucile discussed what the impact of inadequate access to surgical healthcare has: “There are so many people that cannot work, that cannot be employed in their community because they are disabled, and this is something that increases the risk of poverty. We [Mercy Ships] think we should aim to achieve sustainable development goal 3 (SDG) which ensures healthy lives and promoting well-being for all at all age. This will help achieve the SDG 1 of reduced poverty. So both are important.”
Mercy Ships and InterSurgeon
In April 2024, Mercy Ships signed up to InterSurgeon after a recommendation by an InterSurgeon member; “She said you need to register, it’s amazing!”. Lucile then added their side event to our organisation events page. Looking at the website, Lucile says; “It’s really interesting to see the map and everyone on it and I hope I can use it more.”
For Mercy Ships side event information, click here
For Mercy Ships profile, click here
