It is August 9, 2008 and former Middlemore Hospital nurse, Kylie Bentham, is returning ‘home’ after a two year assignment, but not without leaving a big chunk of her heart behind onboard a floating hospital in West Africa.

During her two years of Mercy Ships service, 32 year old Kylie served as Operating Theatre Supervisor on two hospital ships. Initially she lived and worked onboard the Mercy Ship Anastasis in Ghana on the ship’s final voyage, and the following year on the Africa Mercy during the new hospital ship’s inaugural mission of mercy in Liberia.

Kylie was responsible to supervise six operating theatres supplying a 78 bed ward and manage a theatre staff of 37 international volunteers. During her time of service more than 6,000 patients received life-giving surgeries onboard the Mercy Ships. Like her staff, Kylie sacrificed not only her time and earning potential back home, but some home comforts as well, living in a ship’s cabin the size of the average Kiwi bathroom.

It was Kylie’s passion and commitment to bring about lasting change to the forgotten poor in the world’s most desperate nations that inspired Vodafone to recognise her as one of New Zealand’s everyday heroes in 2005. The World of Difference programme was launched in 2001 with a vision to inspire Kiwis to make a real difference to causes they were passionate about anywhere in the world. Kylie had volunteered before in the operating theatres of a Mercy Ship off the coast of West Africa, and says she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that this is where her heart lay for a second stint.

While the recipients of surgery included ophthalmic, maxillo-facial and plastic surgery, goiters and ear nose and throat work, Kylie says it was the vesico vaginal fistula patients (VVF) whose stories impacted her the most deeply.

These patients were mothers who had no access to caesareans to relieve prolonged labour, or were often young girls having babies in their early teens and were permanently damaged. "With basic maternal care, it was completely preventable," says Kylie. "The mother could die, but generally what happened was that the baby died inside the woman. After 7 to 10 agonising days she would deliver a dead and decomposing baby after what should have been a happy birth. The damaged bladder tissue would develop a permanent hole. Urine leaks out constantly, making the women stink. Most are abandoned by their husbands, family and society," she stated.

In three weeks the surgical procedure has been performed, healing has taken place, and many of these women who arrived reeking and rejected, left the ship knowing they were loved and accepted. Some were touched―literally―for the first time in years.

"It is the faces of those receiving hope and healing through this kind of redemptive surgery that I will always remember," says Kylie.