U.S. Hospital Ship to Visit PH, Help Asian Countries Prepare for Disasters
The USNS Mercy leaves its home port of San Diego May 1 bound for Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia.
It will spend 14 days in each country to help local governments and aid providers to prepare for natural disasters.
Earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis and volcanoes periodically afflict the four countries that lie in the region known as the “ring of fire.”
The USNS Mercys mission, labeled Pacific Partnership 2012, is undertaken to train militaries and civilians to work together in a coordinated response before the next disaster strikes.
“Were preparing in calm to respond in crisis,” said U.S. Navy Captain James Morgan, the mission commander.
The Pacific Partnership, now in its seventh year, sprang out of the 2004 tsunami that devastated Indonesia and surrounding countries. Partners in this years mission include 12 other countries on the Asia-Pacific rim and representatives from many nonprofit groups and international agencies.
“Nongovernmental organizations and the international agencies are a critical part of the continuity that maintains and builds capacity with local populations from year to year,” Morgan said. He added that the value of multiple entities working together was evident in March 2011 in the global response to the earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan.
Jonathan Olmstead, the captain of USNS Mercy, was part of the 2011 Japan relief effort, known as Operation Tomodachi, as well Pacific Partnership 2009 and the Indonesian tsunami relief operation. He said he knows “firsthand what an impact we will have on the local populations well visit and in building relationships … to overcome the adversity of the natural disaster.”
The USNS Mercy was built originally as an oil tanker before its conversion to a floating hospital in 1986. The ship has 12 operating rooms and the full array of capabilities found in a first-rate, land-based hospital.
The medical and health care personnel aboard the ship will conduct medical, dental and veterinary clinics ashore and will participate in professional symposiums, conferences, exercises and doctor round tables. “And for the first time, we expect to conduct a live VTC surgery for instruction purposes,” Morgan said.
The ship will anchor offshore in each country because of the absence of pier facilities where the ship may tie up. “To move doctors, nurses, and patients back and forth, we will be operating two 11-meter utility boats, 12 to 16 hours per day, ferrying passengers from ship to shore and back,” Olmstead said.
The ship is slated to return to San Diego in mid-September.
