Hospital Ship AFRICA MERCY

Since 2018, Alan has been working with the Mercy Ships organization, providing technical assistance for modifications to the hospital ship AFRICA MERCY, which has been providing urgently needed medical and dental care, as well as training and healthcare education, to several west African nations.  The AFRICA MERCY was originally built (1980) as a trainship (DRONNING INGRID), ferrying  passenger trains between Denmark and Sweden for Danish State Railways.  The ship was acquired by Mercy Ships in 1999 and then spent several years being converted in the yard at Newcastle-upon-Tyne into a hospital ship.  AFRICA MERCY has five operating rooms, an intensive care unit, 80 patient beds.  The normal crew complement (healthcare workers plus ship's force) is 450. The ship also carries a fleet of Land Rover vehicles which provide outreach services into the interior of the host countries.  Alan's most recent assignments have focused on improvements to the storage and distribution of medical supplies and ship's stores in an area of the ship known as the "cargo hold".  Click here for more information about the Mercy Ships organization.

Photos below show AFRICA MERCY undergoing annual maintenance work at the Astican shipyard in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain