Around the world, billions of people live in fear and desperation, with impure water, inadequate food, and little or no access to health care. More than 1.2 billion people live on less than £1 per day. Most of Africa’s population has no access to a hospital or doctor. More than 6 million children die each year from completely preventable causes like malaria, diarrhea and pneumonia.

Mercy Ships is a global charity that has operated hospital ships in developing nations since 1978. Their mission is to bring hope and healing to the forgotten poor.

In 1978, Don and Deyon Stephens began the process of finding a suitable vessel to fulfill the dream in their hearts of a hospital ship serving the world’s poor. Don and Deyon began recruiting crew to staff the ship and raising the funding to bring the Mercy Ship into compliance with international standards. Ongoing efforts resulted in the transformation of the passenger ship into a hospital ship that served for almost 30 years.

In 2009 the Variety Club International Humanitarian Award, whose previous winners include Sir Winston Churchill and Audrey Hepburn, was awarded to Don and Deyon Stephens in London. Don Stephens has received the Two Hungers Award and the Religious Heritage Award.

Mercy Ships programmes promote health and well-being by serving the urgent surgical needs of the world’s forgotten poor and empowering developing communities. Since 1978, Mercy Ships has provided services in developing nations valued at more than £537 million, including the following:

• Performed more than 47,000 life-changing operations such as cleft lip and palate repair, cataract removal, orthopaedic procedures, facial reconstruction and obstetric fistula repair.
• Treated over 422,120 patients in village clinics with more than 456,400 procedures performed.
• Treated over 95,800 dental patients with more than 228,100 dental procedures performed.
• Trained over 15,300 local health-care professionals who have in turn trained many others.
• Taught 125,800 local people in basic health care.
• Completed over 1,085 community development projects focusing on water and sanitation, education, infrastructure development and agriculture.

For more information or to make a monetary donation that will make a real difference to the world’s forgotten poor, please visit http://www.mercyships.org.uk/

Do Not Delay! is a project to bring breast cancer screening to the women of Lithuania. In 2003, the death rate from breast cancer in Lithuania was the highest in Europe but the work of Do Not Delay! has already reduced that in only six years.

Do Not Delay! was started by Agnė Zuokienė. It runs the Pink Bus, a mobile breast cancer screening unit that travels all over Lithuania, even to the most remote areas, to take the important message about regular breast screening to all the women it can reach.

The Pink Bus run by Do Not Delay has already reached 445 towns and cities in Lithuania and over 40 000 women have been screened for breast cancer with the help of the special equipment carried by the Pink Bus. A fifth of those examine had benign breast tumours but 473 were found to have breast cancer. Their cancer was diagnosed earlier than it would have been and potentially life-saving treatment has been started.

Do Not Delay! and its Pink Bus can help many more women and reduce the death rate from breast cancer in Lithuania even further. But running the Pink Bus and providing the breast screening equipment is expensive. This is why the funding by the partnership with Intersecond Ltd is so vital.

You can now book your collection for Do Not Delay! for a convenient day and time at www.collect4pink.co.uk