Carisa Lee

Re­porter

carisa.lee@cnc3.co.tt

From to­day un­til Au­gust 11, T&T cit­i­zens will ben­e­fit from free med­ical care thanks to prac­ti­tion­ers aboard the USNS Com­fort, a US Navy hos­pi­tal ship.

The float­ing hos­pi­tal, which ar­rived in the coun­try on Tues­day, is equipped with 80 In­ten­sive Care Unit (ICU) beds and 800 ward beds.

Eight hun­dred staff mem­bers are par­tic­i­pat­ing in the cur­rent hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sion.

From to­day through Sat­ur­day, those in need of med­ical ser­vices can ac­cess free care from the USNS Com­fort team at the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) be­tween 8 am and 4 pm.

“We ac­cept every­one who walks through the front door. On av­er­age, at the med­ical site (NA­PA), we can av­er­age about 500 pa­tients a day,” As­so­ciate Di­rec­tor of Nurs­ing Ser­vices, Lieu­tenant George Men­ninger, said yes­ter­day.

Dur­ing a tour of the ves­sel, Men­ninger ex­plained that den­tal care and op­tom­e­try made up the ma­jor­i­ty of pa­tients dur­ing their hu­man­i­tar­i­an mis­sions.

“I will say a bulk of our pa­tients are for vi­sion, so pre­scrip­tion glass­es... that’s a very huge need, 40 per cent,” he shared.

He added that pae­di­atric and adult med­i­cine, as well as den­tal ser­vices, were some of the main ser­vices.

How­ev­er, pa­tients can al­so re­ceive care in women’s health, an­cil­lary sup­port, der­ma­tol­ogy and car­di­ol­o­gy at the site.

Sur­gi­cal op­er­a­tions will oc­cur aboard the ship.

Phar­ma­cy tech­ni­cian on the ves­sel, Ben­jamin Rea­son, said they had pre­pared thou­sands of pre-pack­aged med­ica­tion kits for pa­tients.

“We pro­vide the med­ica­tions that the providers ask for af­ter­wards, and we al­ways give enough to see out a whole treat­ment plan be­cause we want to make sure that we get a good qual­i­ty treat­ment in,” he said.

“We have med­ica­tions for pain, gas­troin­testi­nal, from head to toe. If you can think about it, we top­i­cal creams, oint­ments, we are pre­pared for any­thing, that’s what it’s all about, its readi­ness, and we are here to help.”

T&T med­ical pro­fes­sion­als will al­so be of­fer­ing sup­port to the vist­ing crew.

This vis­it marks the third time the Com­fort has pro­vid­ed ser­vices for T&T.