What do I do in Benin?

While I’m away I’ll be staying on the Africa Mercy. The Africa Mercy is a Christian hospital ship that serves the people of West Africa by taking the love of Jesus demonstrated by giving our time and resources to help people in need.

The ship has a dual purpose of Medicine and Mission. The Mission to tell people that Jesus loves them, the Medicine to perform curative surgeries.

My main part in the jigsaw is to do dental surgery in a land based clinic about two miles on shore. I’ll be eating, sleeping and living on the boat and, no, it won’t be going anywhere during my two weeks. The next time the ship is due to move is the end of 2009 when it’ll head off to the Canary Islands for a month of maintenance for her and R&R for the crew.

The other surgeries the ship does, and these are all done on board, are mostly cataracts, contractures (burn scars) and gynaecology. These are all areas of medicine that lend themselves to single surgical intervention rather than long term medication e.g. diabetes.

A typical dental day will involve seeing 50-60 patients (rather than the 20 or so I see in the UK), nearly all of whom will have long standing painful abscesses and will typically each have four or five teeth extracted.

You can find out more about the ship here.