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Mercy Ships and Heads of State gather at Dakar as latest hospital ship service

A group of invited Heads of State and other important guests joined Senegal’s President Macky Sall on Monday (30 May) to approve a Dakar Declaration to expedite improvements in surgical care for their nations.

Journalist May 31, 2022
Updated 2022/11/19 at 1:50 PM

The Heads of State together with their respective Ministers of health are from Benin, Cameroon, Congo
Brazzaville, Côte d’Ivoire, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Madagascar, Sierra Leone and Togo, plus the host country, Senegal.

This was part of inaugural ceremonies on board the world’s largest civilian purpose-built hospital ship, the 37,000-ton GLOBAL MERCY (IMO 9726499) as the new-build ship enters into service to Africa.

During the week Mercy Ships will commemorate 30 years of partnership with Africa.

Festivities during this week will highlight recent efforts and collaboration around the goal of increased provision of safe surgical, obstetric and anesthetic care in Africa by 2030.

Global Mercy is joining with the organisation’s other, well-known, 16,500-ton ship, AFRICA MERCY (IMO 7803188), which is also present in Dakar for the occasion.

Delivery of Global Mercy has more than doubled the surgical capacity and patient beds of Mercy Ships. She is the first purpose-built floating hospital ship for the humanitarian organisation, and was built to a Swedish-design (Stena RoRo, Göteborg), by China State Shipbuilding Corporation (CSSC) and the Tianjin Xingang Shipyard based in Tianjin, China.

She was completed last year before heading for Antwerp to undergo outfitting. The hospital ship was unveiled to visitors for the first time in February this year during a two-week stop-over in Rotterdam.

The celebrations and ceremonies continue in Dakar until Thursday, 2 June 2022, before the world’s newest hospital ship enters full service to patients in varous parts of Africa.

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