USNS Comfort

By Daniel Hamon

A U.S. hospital ship completed a four-month mission to provide humanitarian care to areas of seven Latin American countries where medical care is limited or not easily available. The USNS Comfort arrived in Haiti on April 9 and left Nicaragua on July 14 to return to the United States. Some of the results include: 100,049 treated patients, 1,657 surgeries, 135,000 filled prescriptions and 15,003 dental patients.

USNS Comfort is part of Continuing Promise 2009, an effort planned and managed by the U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command and U.S. 4th Fleet. Participants include U.S and international military medical personnel, regional health ministries and NGOs. This year, USNS Comfort visited Haiti, Dominican Republic, Antigua, Panama, Colombia, El Salvador and Nicaragua.

In addition to medical and dental care, USNS Comfort provided veterinary care, delivered donated food and medicines worth over $4 million, and its Navy Seabees completed 13 construction projects. 

Continuing Promise 2009 was the 4th humanitarian mission to this region. The prior three missions combined treated 169,000 patients and performed over 1,500 surgeries.

Fred Baker, filing a report aboard the USNS Comfort, makes the following comments:

But the impact of the $25 million mission cannot effectively be measured in terms of gross numbers, but more so in the individual lives it changes, said Peggy Goebel, a volunteer nurse working aboard with Project Hope, one of the first groups to team up with the Navy for these types of missions. 

“The difference can’t be measured in bottles of Tylenol passed out … that’s not it,” she said.

Goebel recalled a teenager she saw in a remote village in Nicaragua. She was 16, poor and hungry. Her baby was swaddled in rags, and at 2 months old, weighed less than a newborn. The young mother was trying to breastfeed, but hadn’t eaten enough to produce milk. The baby was starving, listless and covered in scabies, Goebel said.

A Navy physician at the site took money from his pocket, gave it to an interpreter to buy formula and diapers, and asked the mother to return the next day. When she did, both mother and baby were bathed and clothed. The doctor and Goebel taught her how to mix the formula. They cleaned her only bottle and fed the baby.

More importantly, Goebel made contact with a local Project Hope coordinator, who will follow up with the mother and child to ensure care. The formula the doctor bought was enough to last only a few days, but the follow-up care could mean the difference between life and death for the baby.

Photo - United States Southern Command

Comments

[Zack Schuler]

Great story Dan...

[Dana]

Thank you Dan - I had no idea about that ship and all the good that it is doing!

[Ligia]

VERY INTERESTING.