Swordsmyth
08-18-2018, 10:45 PM
Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Friday he would dispatch a U.S. Navy hospital ship to the Colombian coast to help treat Venezuelan refugees that have overwhelmed the Colombian medical system — the first U.S. military foray into the Venezuela crisis.
“It is absolutely a humanitarian mission. We’re not sending soldiers, we’re sending doctors,” Mattis told reporters of his plans to send the gleaming white, former freighter with a Red Cross painted on its side to help treat refugees in Colombia and probably other Latin American nations.
He gave no timetable for when the ship, probably the ship known as the Comfort, would set sail from its home port, likely Norfolk, Virginia.
U.S. defense officials have yet to say how the ship would be outfitted for the Venezuelan refugee health care relief mission. In times of war, the Comfort can carry 1,215 military medical personnel, conduct 12 simultaneous surgeries, operate 1,000 hospital beds and ferry casualties by helicopter. Typically, it has carried a smaller crew with lesser capabilities aimed at providing basic humanitarian relief in hard-to-reach areas or places stricken by natural disaster.
More at: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article216866215.html
“It is absolutely a humanitarian mission. We’re not sending soldiers, we’re sending doctors,” Mattis told reporters of his plans to send the gleaming white, former freighter with a Red Cross painted on its side to help treat refugees in Colombia and probably other Latin American nations.
He gave no timetable for when the ship, probably the ship known as the Comfort, would set sail from its home port, likely Norfolk, Virginia.
U.S. defense officials have yet to say how the ship would be outfitted for the Venezuelan refugee health care relief mission. In times of war, the Comfort can carry 1,215 military medical personnel, conduct 12 simultaneous surgeries, operate 1,000 hospital beds and ferry casualties by helicopter. Typically, it has carried a smaller crew with lesser capabilities aimed at providing basic humanitarian relief in hard-to-reach areas or places stricken by natural disaster.
More at: https://www.mcclatchydc.com/latest-news/article216866215.html