After several years of construction at the Tianjin Xingang shipyard in northern China, the official sea trial of Global Mercy, the world’s largest civilian hospital ship has now been completed with good results.
The shipyard will present the ship for delivery this summer and the vessel will then sail to Antwerp in Belgium on its maiden voyage, where some members of the crew will board and the medical equipment supplemented.
After that, a visit to Rotterdam will follow, and after this the Global Mercy will be ready for its first important mission in West Africa.
Stena RoRo is building the Global Mercy on behalf of the international charity organization Mercy Ships. The project started in 2013, and on board the siph are operating theatres and hospital wards, and everything needed for both patients and those working on board, including schools and preschools for the children of the volunteers.
The purpose of a sea trial is to ensure that the ship’s systems are working properly during operation and that the requirements of the specifications and applicable standards are met. The hospital services to be provided on the Global Mercy entail increased requirements for good ventilation and minimization of vibrations, for example. This was also checked and she was approved on all counts
says Per Westling, CEO Stena RoRo.
The Global Mercy will also have six operating theatres, 200 hospital beds, a laboratory, a patient clinic and an eye and dental clinic. In total, it will be able to accommodate 950 people, of which 641 are crew.
In addition to providing free medical and dental care, Mercy Ships contributes to building up local healthcare infrastructure by training local healthcare staff. For this reason, the Global Mercy is equipped with training facilities, including equipment for virtual reality training and other simulations of care and methods for use in environments with limited resources.
The Global Mercy is a special project that we are proud to be a part of. Mercy Ships is doing a fantastic job and with the new ship, their capacity to provide free medical care to many extremely vulnerable people will be more than twice as large
added Per Westling.
The first mission of the ship will take place in 2022, when the Global Mercy is expected to call at Dakar in Senegal. There will then be more than six hundred volunteers aboard from all over the world and from a variety of professional categories, who will make it all possible through their contributions of skills and time.
