The Africa Mercy is a 16,500 ton hospital ship, 500 feet long, equipped with five state-of-the-art operating rooms as well as intensive care and ward bed space for up to 82 patients. The vessel is staffed by 400 volunteers from 40 different nations. Professionals including surgeons, dentists, nurses, health care trainers, teachers, cooks, seamen, engineers, and agriculturalists donate their time and skills to the effort. This floating hospital typically spends 10 months at one port. In recent years they visited the African countries of Sierra Leone, Togo and Guinea. In 2013-14 the Africa Mercy docked in the Republic of Congo where the volunteer crew provided more than 2,500 free surgeries.
In each African port, Mercy Ships holds Patient Selection Days to identify people with conditions treatable by free surgeries on the ship. In the Republic of Congo over 7,300 people lined up to be screened by Mercy Ships volunteer medical staff. According to a recent phone conversation with Tom Velnosky, Sr. Biomedical Systems Engineer for the Africa Mercy, potential patients sometimes walk for miles or even come from neighboring countries just to find out if they meet the requirements for surgical treatment.
Mr. Velnosky indicated that he contacts various manufacturers to acquire equipment to outfit the operating rooms on the ship. He reached out to Bovie Medical to see if we could help Mercy Ships in their mission to bring free surgeries to people in some of the world’s most poor nations. As a result, a partnership began. Bovie Medical replaced the electrosurgical units onboard the Africa Mercy with the Bovie IDS 300s in all five surgical suites. We also provided a Bovie Aaron 950 to provide emergency coagulation in the dental clinic. The Bovie IDS 300s are used for a variety of procedures, from treating superficial keloids to correcting fistulas caused by child birth injuries, cleft lips and palates, tumor removals, and other procedures including pediatric orthopedic surgeries. According to Tom, “The IDS 300 provides consistency, and they are very reliable.” While complimenting the functioning of the Bovie products, he further commented that “Companies don’t give things. People do,” and added, “Mercy Ships is extremely grateful for the partnership with Bovie President Rob Saron and all of the staff at Bovie,”
We at Bovie Medical are proud to be able to support the good work that Mercy Ships does through the Africa Mercy and look forward to working with them when their new vessel, the Atlantic Mercy launches in 2017.
