Marion nurse volunteers on floating hospital in West Africa

MARION — As a nurse, Melisa Fitch thought she had seen most everything.

But the 26-year-old’s eyes were opened to whole different world when she volunteered for Mercy Ships in Sierra Leone, in West Africa.

“It’s nursing, but everything’s different,” she says.

Mercy Ships is a Christian global charity serving those in need of health care and relief in the world’s poorest countries. The “hospitals” are retired ocean liners transformed into floating hospitals which are docked for 10-month periods.

Fitch, a nurse at Mercy Medical Center in Cedar Rapids, studied in South Africa for a semester while a student at Luther College in Decorah.

“It got me thinking I wanted to go back,” she says.

This spring she joined the crew of the “Africa Mercy”, a 16,500-ton vessel that serves the nations of Africa. The lower decks of the ship have been converted into a hospital with a 78-bed hospital ward and an Intensive Care Unit. The crew, which averages 450 volunteers, including not only medical professionals, but mechanics, accountants and others who keep the operation running smoothly, stays in rooms in the upper decks.

“It’s literally a small town on the ship,” Fitch says.

The “Africa Mercy” docked at the port of Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital city. All surgeries and medical supplies are donated so the patients are not charged.

Because there is no health insurance in Africa, the need for free medical care is great, Fitch says. In Africa, patients have to pay upfront for medical treatment, something many people can’t afford to do.

In Sierra Leone, there are four hospital beds for every 10,000 people, Fitch says. Only 95 doctors are available in the West African country with a population of more than 5 million people.

The “Africa Mercy” crew only performs surgical procedures, not medical. More than 1,000 people were screened for such ailments as goiters, cleft lips and palates, hernia removals, bowed legs and head and neck tumors. Most of these ailments were profound because people can’t afford to get them regularly checked.

Many people waited in line for days to be screened by the “Africa Mercy” crew.

“I knew there was a large need, but it still shocks you,” Fitch says. “It was really hard to see people you couldn’t help.”

During her two-and-a-half month duty, Fitch was involved in pre- and postoperative care.

What medical advances were made in the Civil War? - Straight Dope ...

The contributions to medical care that developed during the Civil War have not been fully appreciated, probably because the quality of care administered was compared against modern standards rather than the standards of the time. The specific accomplishments that constituted major advances were as follows. 1. Accumulation of adequate records and detailed reports for the first time permitted a complete military medical history. This led to the publication of the Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, which was identified in Europe as the first major academic accomplishment by US medicine. 2. Development of a system of managing mass casualties, including aid stations, field hospitals, and general hospitals, set the pattern for management of the wounded in World War I, World War II, and the Korean War. 3. The pavilion-style general hospitals, which were well ventilated and clean, were copied in the design of large civilian hospitals over the next 75 years. 4. The importance of immediate, definitive treatment of wounds and fractures was demonstrated and it was shown that major operative procedures, such as amputation, were optimally carried out in the first 24 hours after wounding. 5. The importance of sanitation and hygiene in preventing infection, disease, and death among the troops in the field was demonstrated. 6. Female nurses were introduced to hospital care and Catholic orders entered the hospital business. 7. The experience and training of thousands of physicians were upgraded and they were introduced to new ideas and standards of care. These included familiarity with prevention and treatment of infectious disease, with anesthetic agents, and with surgical principles that rapidly advanced the overall quality of American medical practice. 8. The Sanitary Commission was formed, a civilian-organized soldier's relief society that set the pattern for the development of the American Red Cross. Speaking of #6 on that list, Surgical techniques improved dramatically during the Civil War. I consider it the father of modern surgery, in fact! Before that time, a physician was likely unfamiliar with the scalpel. But during the war, physicians by the thousands learned the trade the hard way. Not the idea situation for the patient, mind, but it did introduce American medical practice to the concept, and they did well enough in such a trial by fire. This was a particular source of horror late in the war.

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