UK Royal ship saves lives in Lake Victoria

Dar es Salaam. After years of contending with little or no access to healthcare facilities, thousands of residents living on about 170 islands in Lake Victoria will now have a reason to smile—thanks to the Royal Navy Ship that has been deployed to serve as a floating hospital.   The “saviour” ship has landed at Lake Victoria after six months at sea and over 850km (500 miles) overland. The Royal Navy ship christened Jubilee Hope, has now found a new home in the lake where it will offer medical care to a population of 400,000 in isolated communities, being the first deployment of such a unique facility on a healthcare mission.

Yesterday, Geita Gold Mine, a subsidiary of Anglo Gold Ashanti Ltd, announced that it would refuel the ship for the next five years—until 2019—at the cost of $500,000 (Sh825 million).

“GGM is proud to participate in this noble initiative,” said managing director of GGM, Mr Michael Van Anen, adding, “This is in keeping with our core value of leaving our host communities with sustainable futures.”

  Mr Willie McPherson, Vine Trust CEO, speaking about the project yesterday, said: “I’m delighted with the optimism and good will that Jubilee Hope is being greeted within the Lake Zone of Tanzania and the wide support amongst those concerned with the provision of primary health care in the island communities.”

  He noted that this would be the third medical ship the company has launched to benefit remote communities in developing countries. Other similar ships serve patients on the Peruvian Amazon in South America.

The Jubilee Hope, fitted out on the Clyde by BAE Systems, has a full dental surgery, operating theatre, two consulting areas, an eye surgery and a laboratory. It will offer cataract operations, dentistry service help for difficult labours and a range of other healthcare needs.

 From Scotland to Tanzania 

For villagers in rural Kenya, seeing the hull of a 150-tonne ship being hauled along dusty roads was not an everyday sight. The unusual three-week road trip was the final stage in a 246-day journey which has seen a former Royal Navy tender travel 8,585 miles by sea and land from Scotland to Lake Victoria to serve communities as a medical ship.

Getting it there was quite an adventure. As it was impossible to sail to the lake up the treacherous River Nile, the only option was to sail down the west coast of Africa, around the Cape, and on to Mombasa, where the top half of the ship was removed to allow it to be towed on a trailer under Kenya’s low overhead power lines.

Volunteers then had to cope with washed-away roads, rebuilding them as they went along.

The vessel—launched by the Edinburgh-based Vine Trust—was then reassembled at the end of its 800km road journey in Kisumu and officially launched on Lake Victoria by the Princess Royal, patron for the charity, this week.

Mr Neil Mungo, 53, an offshore installation manager, was part of a five-strong team of volunteers from oil and gas services company Wood Group PSN who took the vessel apart in Mombasa, then put it back together again on Lake Victoria.

 “We marked everything very, very carefully so when it went back together we would know what went where. It took two weeks. I’ve never done anything like that before,” he says.

A different team, from the Kenyan-based marine contractor Comarco, then drove it to Kisumu. “They had to get a team to fill in potholes on the way, and they had to build a section of the road at the end because the rain had washed it away,” said Mr Mungo. “As it went through the villages, hundreds of schoolchildren would pile out on to the road watching this boat.” Once it was in Kisumu, Mr Mungo, a former marine engineer, and the other volunteers were helped by Tanzanian workers in the town’s marine yard to reassemble it.

The six-month sea voyage almost stalled at the beginning.

Mr David Heap, 71, a former submariner and member of the Maritime Volunteer Service who was among the crew who sailed from Greenock, said they spent 21 days stormbound in Falmouth six days into the journey. “We had some rough seas throughout,” he said. “Pretty much everyone was seasick.”

Over the next 20 years an estimated 1 million patients, who currently have little or no access to basic medical care, will be seen aboard the ship, which set sail from Glasgow on 22 January.  The Citizen last month published exclusive story about the poor health conditions facing thousands of people in the world’s second largest fresh water lake—where HIV infection rate must be the highest in the world, estimated to be 40 per cent.

 Despite being the biggest contributors of the economy in the region through fishing, thousands of residents in Lake Victoria’s Islands lack access to health care centres.

Additional Report by The Guardian newspaper, UK.