Navy hospital ship to deploy again

WASHINGTON – The Navy’s East Coast-base hospital ship USNS Comfort will embark in June on another humanitarian mission to help countries cope with the influx of Venezuelans fleeing that country’s economic and political crisis, VP Mike Pence said May 7 in a speech on the crisis to the Council of the Americas annual conference. USNS Comfort will leave in June on a 5-month mission to South and Central America, and the Caribbean to help countries "overwhelmed" by the more than three million Venezuelan refugees who have fled in recent years, Pence said. Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan said that before USNS Comfort can be deploy from its homeport of Norfolk, Va., a staff of doctors, nurses, other medical and support staff have to be assembled. The Comfort's tour in the fall of 2018 provided medical assistance in Colombia and several other countries where most of the Venezuelan refugees have settled. Trump administration officials have warned that another two million people are expected to flee by the end of 2019, if the crisis continues in the once-prosperous nation. (Source: The AP 05/07/19) Gulf Coast Note: Personnel from Naval Hospital Pensacola, Fla., and some of its branch clinics in La., Miss., and Fla., are no strangers to deploying with USNS Comfort. Dr. Chris Lewis, a Navy Pulmonary Medicine specialist at NHP, was among the internal medicine personnel to deploy in USNS Comfort during its Haitian recovery effort in 2010. On a four-hour notice, NHP corpsmen, laboratory technicians and pediatricians deployed in 2017 with USNS Comfort following the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria. They remained on duty for three months. In 2015, 19 personnel from NHP deployed with Comfort as part of the Continuing Promise humanitarian deployment for six months through Caribbean, and Central and South American countries. Although no orders have been cut for Navy medical and other personnel within the Gulf Coast region, Navy Medicine is in the process of identifying Comfort’s mission-needs and available personnel.