Mr Sean Fitzgerald
The guest speaker on Wednesday 5th February was Mr Sean Fitzgerald, an ambassador for “Mercy Ships” since his retirement as a Stena Line sea captain. “Mercy Ships” is an international charity founded in 1978 by Americans Don and Dayton Stevens, and committed to bringing hope and healing to parts of sub-Saharan Africa where thousands of people do not have access to modern health care. A hospital ship is an efficient way to deliver state-of-the-art medical services to places where clean water, reliable electricity and skilled doctors are non-existent or scarce. The charity maintains two ships which together perform more than 5000 surgeries and over 28,000 dental procedures annually, while training more than 2800 medical professionals. This ensures ongoing support after the ships depart. The aim of the charity is to make itself redundant by establishing modern on-shore health care facilities.
The images below show the “Global Mercy” [on the left] and the “Africa Mercy”. To give some idea of scale the “Global Mercy” has a crew of 950 covering 200 different jobs. It has 6 operating theatres, 200 patient beds, a laboratory, a CT scanner, out-patients’ clinics as well as dental surgeries. The “Africa Mercy” boasts five operating theatres, an X-ray unit, a recovery suite, an intensive care unit and 86 ward beds. Both are similar in size to the Stena Line car ferries which daily between Belfast and Liverpool and were built on blue-prints provided by the company.
Sean was warmly thanked for his informative talk.
