Blog vol 3. 37. The hull complete of the Mau Ipata, the Amazon hospital boat!
On the banks of the Amazon River, the rains start early. While we are firing up Yule logs the December rains in the Amazon basin start to fill in the flood plains of the largest river in the world. The Amazon drains 35% of South America and represents 20% of the world’s river discharge. The Mau Ipata is ready for the floods.
A good part of the 80 tonnes of steel sheets that are supplied for the Mau Ipata, Medical Ministry International’s new hospital boat, has been fabricated into a hull, 9 metres by 36 metres. The next step is the decks for the ship. It is all very fantastic, it hearkens back to the story of Noah building the Ark (which was about 4x bigger and built nowhere near a river), and no doubt, everyone thought he was crazy.
The scale of it, the huge dreaming, the tangible support, and the hands-on work done to create such a boat as the Mau Ipata is mind-boggling. When fully operational it will serve over 280 communities along the Amazon that have little to no access to health care. When you look at the health care issues we are having in Canada, with some communities in remote areas of Newfoundland or Northern Canada having no doctors, we get a little taste of this crisis. (Read more about the Mau Ipata
here).
What is really cool is that Burlington Eyecare gets to be part of this work. We are raising $50,000 CDN to equip the eye clinics on the boat. We were inspired by the scale of the dream and the positive impact it will have on thousands of people. We work hard to provide excellent eye care to our patients here in Burlington and would love to see other people have access to the same type of care wherever they are. If we can help make this happen then we will. (Access Burlington Eyecare's fundraising initiative
here).
We are close to 50% of our goal already raised!!! Thank you to everyone for your support!
We are excited to share progress as it happens.
til next week,
the good doctor
