Hi-tech ships float miracle-working surgeons to Africa’s poor
Published: November 4, 2005
Today the Anastasis is the world’s largest floating non-governmental hospital, with three fully-equipped operating theatres, a dental clinic, an X-ray unit, CT scanner and a laboratory. The ship employs new technology that enables pathologists in the UK to view images of tumors via satellite and make quick diagnoses.
The faith that 25 years ago enabled a volunteer youth mission to believe it could see a dilapidated ocean liner turned into a hi-tech floating hospital is the catalyst today behind even more remarkable transformations – in the bodies and spirits of the poorest of the world’s poor.
Specializing in the healing of horrific facial deformities in places where often little or no professional health care exists, Mercy Ships International’s three vessels, staffed by thousands of volunteers, have provided more than 2 million services with a direct impact on 5.5 million people.
Following the 2,000 year-old model of Jesus – to make the blind see, the lame walk, the mute speak and proclaim good news – the Christian organization has performed more than 18,000 operations and surgical procedures, including cleft lip and palate, cataract removal, straightening of crossed-eyes and – in stunning fashion – orthopedic and facial reconstructions to bring healing from ghastly tumors that defy imagination.
Photojournalist Scott Harrison captured on film some of the remarkable transformations from life-threatening debilitations rarely seen in developed nations.
Alfred Sossou, from a small fishing village on Lake Aheme in Benin, West Africa, was 10 when his face began to morph into an image of unspeakable horror from a cemento-ossifying fibroma – a rare rapidly growing facial tumor.
The Sossou family, living on less than a dollar a day in a mud hut without electricity or running water, sought village witchdoctors, who cut holes in the boy’s face, sacrificed chickens, invoked idols and ancestors and performed dances, Harrison recalled.
But the tumor continued to grow, pushing Alfred’s tongue back into his throat, eventually absorbing his teeth in his bottom jaw. Doctors in Benin’s largest city could offer no treatment and advised the family to make another trip to the witchdoctors.
After a total of 15 witchdoctors had taken all the family’s money, the tumor became monstrous, filling and then spilling out of his mouth, almost the size of a basketball.
“To eat, Alfred would force a hand between the oozing pink mass and the roof of his mouth, then shove food into an unspeakable void,” Harrison wrote.
Slowly dying of starvation, he weighed only 44 pounds – five of those pounds were his tumor.
Then, a visiting pastor promised his church would pray for an answer and a cure. The next morning, Alfred said he’d been told in a dream that “his helper would come.”
Three months later, the pastor returned to the house to tell Alfred and his family that a ship was coming to Benin, with a hospital and team of doctors who might be able to help.
Alfred’s skeptical father was in no mood to risk more money, but his mother argued vehemently to trust the pastor, and the family pulled together the $10 taxi fare.
Later, in an operating room aboard the Mercy Ship Anastasis, Alfred’s tumor lay in a tray. Two accomplished British and German surgeons took two ribs and pieces of bone from the 14-year-old boy’s hip and grafted them to the titanium plate that now formed his lower jaw.
Eyes that once “revealed a soul wrought with such unspeakable horror one would be forced to turn away, reeling in shock, terror, and disbelief,” Harrison wrote, are now “windows to a soul filled with grace.”
Benin’s president, Matthieu Kérékou, told Mercy Ships of his “deep gratitude for the love that you have for the population of Benin.”
“To all of the ladies and gentlemen of the ship, I express my sincere congratulations for such an unflinching commitment on the side of the most vulnerable and poorest of third-world countries,” he said.
Many other national leaders have thanked Mercy Ships for its work.
President Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh of Gambia, said, “Not only have you treated my people and taken care of them, but you have also taught them valuable lessons, the most important being love and respect and caring for each other irrespective of race and religion. … We Gambians are very grateful to you.”
Endorsing the ministry, Prime Minister Tony Blair says Mercy Ships’ work “goes beyond healing and comforting the sick … it provides a sense of hope that is badly needed in the places they work.”
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: