• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

USS Peleliu Stops on Naval Base Guam

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS070723-01
Release Date: 7/23/2007 7:54:00 AM

By Theresa Dezellem, U.S. Naval Forces Marianas Public Affairs

SANTA RITA, Guam (NNS) -- Humanitarian aid is often carried out by Navy hospital ships, but one war ship -- USS Peleliu (LHA 5) -- arrived in Guam on June 10 loaded with medical and humanitarian aid personnel.

Personnel from the Air Force and Army are joining the Navy medical and preventive medicine team to render aid to people in island nations in the Western Pacific and countries in Asia.

Peleliu arrived in Guam to on-load supplies and embark personnel who will assist in their mission. The ship departed a few days later for their four-month deployment.

Capt. Bruce Stewart, the mission commander, said the Pacific Partnership 2007 mission that the Peleliu deployed with is about people from different walks of life, coming together to make a difference in the lives of others.

“Medical personnel, engineers, non-government organizations that are volunteering to come with us, partner nations and host nations, everybody is working together to show some compassion and commitment and to help people better their lives,” said Stewart.

The Navy is coordinating medical care with several host nations and has partnered with nations including Singapore, Japan, Australia and Canada among others to assist in making the mission possible.

“I think we partner very well with the other nations around the Pacific Rim and it’s a great mission and it’s really about people helping people,” said Stewart.

Cmdr. Amir Harari, senior medical officer aboard Peleliu, said the ship will spend between five and 15 days at each location where the medical personnel will perform surgeries and provide treatment for patients who have been screened and selected by the host nation for treatment.

“We’re anticipating about 37,000 patients doing primary care ashore and that does not include any of the educational things we will be doing, biomedical that we’ll be doing, as well environmental medicine that some of our people will be doing,” said Harari.

Force Surgeon Capt. Scott Flinn said the medical staff includes plastic surgeons, dentists, trauma surgeons, infectious disease specialists, among other doctors, as well as veterinarians and other preventive medicine personnel.

Flinn said the majority of the surgeries the team will perform will be simple ones that do not require long-term post operative care.

“We’re also putting together a forward deployed prev-med unit and it’s going to go ashore and help with different things [such as] vector control, improving sanitation and hospital facilities,” said Flinn.