U.S. hospital ship sails on mission to aid Aceh victims
U.S. hospital ship sails on mission to aid Aceh victims
Martin Abbugao, Agence France-Presse/Singapore
A hulking U.S. Navy hospital ship, the USNS Mercy, will sail this week from Singapore to the Indonesian province of Aceh to help boost medical relief efforts for victims of the tsunami disaster.
The whitewashed 1,000-bed floating hospital, the length of three football fields, arrived here on Saturday after a 24-day journey from its homeport of San Diego, California and was scheduled to depart on Tuesday for Aceh.
As the U.S. military prepares to scale down its relief efforts in Indonesia, the arrival of the hospital ship -- staffed by both navy and civilian medical personnel -- signals a shift in focus to the longer-term medical needs of the people uprooted from their homes.
More than 283,000 people were killed by the Dec. 26 tsunamis, over 230,000 of them in Aceh. Millions more were left homeless when the giant waves smashed into Indian Ocean coastlines.
"We're here on a humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission," said Mercy's commanding officer Captain David Llewellyn.
"It means we're part of a human effort that is a partnership of lots of people, lots of organizations and lots of countries to assist our fellow human beings in times of need," he told reporters during the Singapore stopover on Saturday.
U.S. ambassador Frank Lavin played down any political significance of the mission, saying "the main point here is this is a humanitarian assistance disaster relief."
Navy hospital ships are normally used to treat U.S. soldiers wounded in combat. The Mercy supported coalition forces during the 1991 Gulf War.
But they also have the secondary mission of providing full hospital service to support U.S. disaster relief and humanitarian operations worldwide.
Llewellyn said before sailing to Asia on Jan. 5, the ship had to adjust its staffing to suit the expected medical needs of the tsunami victims and the devastated local communities in general.
This meant that more obstetricians, gynaecologists, pediatricians, internal medicine specialists and surgeons had to be brought on board.
In an innovation for the Indonesian mission, the navy partnered with non-government groups such as US-based Project Hope and Mercy Relief in Singapore to use the Mercy as a platform for medical assistance in the disaster zone.
Harold Timboe, an official with Project Hope, said 90 volunteer civilian doctors and nurses from the United States were to fly into Singapore this weekend and join Mercy's medical personnel as they sailed into Aceh.
"We will form the main staff for the hospital ship," said Timboe.
He said many of the Project Hope doctors and nurses were from Harvard University and, like himself, the University of Texas.
These volunteers are experienced in the treatment of trauma and post-trauma cases, infections as well as mental and psychological problems.