THE founder of the Stagecoach transport empire has put £4m towards converting a ferry into the world’s biggest non-military hospital ship, which will sail around the African coast carrying out medical operations.

Former nurse Ann Gloag’s money helped to buy the Africa Mercy, formerly a Danish ferry called Droning Ingrid. The vessel is nearing the end of a £30m refit at the Cammell Laird shipyard at Hebburn on Tyneside.

The ship, equipped with six operating theatres, an intensive care unit, an 80-bed ward, an ophthalmic unit and two computerised tomography scanners, will set sail for Africa in July and is designed to perform some 7,000 operations a year, many of them by National Health Service staff who give up holiday time to take part.

An advance team is in Ghana beginning to select those who can be helped by surgery.

Gloag, whose family is 125th in The Sunday Times Rich List with a fortune of £400m, decided to back the project after seeing what had happened to some previous aid donated to Africa.

“My previous experience of building hospitals in Africa had been that you take in 5,000 blankets and three weeks later, there is none,” she said. “If you take specialist equipment then find that it’s taken, that can be dispiriting. This way you know you’ve got electricity, water, you know your stuff’s not going to be stolen. You know exactly where the money’s going.”

At 500ft long, weighing 16,500 tons and accommodating 500 crew and medical staff, the ship is the biggest addition to the fleet of the charity Mercy Ships International. Only the US Navy’s hospital ships Comfort and Mercy are bigger.

The eight decks have been transformed to include crew and staff quarters, a school for 78 children, a cafe, restaurant, gymnasium and a collection of shops.

Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin tycoon, is said to have donated a “substantial amount” towards the refitting of the ship, which has received the backing of Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Sir John Major, the former Conservative prime minister.

The Mercy Ships charity was founded by Don Stephens, an American Christian evangelist and author, in 1978 and has provided medical help to 5.5m people worldwide, as well as assisting in building projects.

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