• Military Menu                       

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

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

U.S. Navy Docs Embark Brazilian Navy Hospital Ship for Humanitarian Mission in the Amazon

Navy NewsStand

Story Number: NNS081214-04
Release Date: 12/14/2008 10:08:00 PM

By Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Michael Wimbish, U.S. Southern Command Public Affairs

MIAMI (NNS) -- U.S. Navy doctors recently embarked aboard a Brazilian Navy hospital ship for a month-long humanitarian medical outreach mission through the heart of the Amazon, helping to bring care to remote jungle villages along a 600-mile stretch of the Madeira River.

The Nov. 7–Dec. 5 exchange was the first time U.S. military doctors have taken part in one of these Brazilian Navy missions that are routinely conducted up and down the winding network of rivers and tributaries in the Amazonian region of northern Brazil.

The Navy doctors, Cmdr. Timothy Coakley and Lt. Cmdr. David Brett-Major, supported a medical staff of 11 Brazilian Navy doctors aboard NAsH Carlos Chagas (U 19), one of the three Brazilian riverine hospital ships. They assisted in treating patients and provided education and training to the embarked Brazilian medical officers on ambulatory and emergent use of ultrasound, field medical case management and tropical public health.

According to both doctors, the exchange was a one-of-a-kind opportunity to share expertise.

"The benefit was definitely [mutual]. It was good for us because it was an opportunity to not only view the culture, but see the disease process that a medical officer in the Navy, who's far forward deployed, was going to see as well," said Coakley.

Coakley said that their expertise was valuable to a Brazilian medical contingent comprised of junior officers and others right out of medical school who had agreed to serve a year with the Brazilian navy. He explained that U.S. military doctors possess extensive combat casualty care experience that can benefit other militaries.

"I think that's what we brought to the table," said Coakley.

During the deployment, the doctors and the Brazilian medical team stopped at 20 villages to provide care, accessing them by small boat or helicopter as the ship steamed along the river nearby.

"The homes were typically wood, clapboard structures on stilts with no screening. Some of the areas we hit, the villagers had never seen a physician before, and other areas that we hit had remembered previous Brazilian navy visits," said Brett-Major.

Once people warmed up to the medical teams, "people were coming out of the jungle to see us," said Coakley. During the single-day village visits, the U.S. Navy doctors consulted the Brazilian detachment in treating minor cases and diagnosing and referring cases that were more complicated.

Brett-Major said they typically faced cases like hypertension, diabetes, low back pain, headaches, skin rashes and fungal infections. But they also dealt with more complicated cases, like severe heart problems and major skin and bone infections.

"We also had a few cases of malaria, leichmaniasis and leprosy," he said.

He added that the medical teams also conducted wellness visits at each stop.

"So, cyclical de-worming of children with Albendazoll to help nutrition and growth, lots of dental care – those kinds of cases," said Brett-Major.

Coakley is the deputy force surgeon for the Navy Expeditionary Combat Command in Little Creek, Va. He specializes in internal medicine and combat care. Brett-Major works at the Navy Medicine Manpower, Personnel, Training and Education Command in Bethesda, Md., where he specializes in internal medicine and serves as the director of the Military Tropical Medicine Course. The doctors were chosen for the mission because they are considered military experts in their fields and have extensive deployment experience both in combat and humanitarian missions.

"For me, this was one of the best experiences professionally I've had. It was a chance to immerse into a culture and actually have the time to work with the local people, understand how their health care is delivered, and to see how their country is working hard to make it happen," said Coakley.

"As a physician, you can seek your reward on many levels, but for me, it's just to see the gratitude of the people and helping out with the children," he said.

Both doctors joined the hospital ship at a Brazilian Navy base in Manaus, the capital of Amazonas State that serves as the main port for the region's extensive river system.

Although both only spoke little Portuguese, there was very little in the way of a language barrier.

"For the medical officers with whom we had the direct professional contact for most of the time… they were very fluent in English in both conversational English and technical writing," said Brett-Major. "We made a very honest effort to speak Portuguese."

The exchange was the culmination of months of discussions by Brazilian military and U.S. Southern Command officials to create a medical subject matter exchange program for the unique Amazon medical missions.

"The Brazilians have been wanting to do something like this for quite some time," said Navy Cmdr. Terrence Dudley, who as the Navy section chief at the U.S. Embassy in Brazil, helped coordinate the exchange. "We had been having people from the tropical medical department in Bethesda down in Manaus over the last few years prior to this, but we had never been able to actually do a deployment on board one of their ships."

Both Coakley and Brett-Major said that such medical exchanges play an important role in creating relationships that can help with future missions.

"The humanitarian mission allows us to go in and do genuine goodwill, and that's something you can't usually get when you're doing collaborative type of military operations. You're able to go in, talk to the people, make that impression – that impression is critical," said Coakley. "If you have the right people to do that, then you can create that kind of goodwill and coordinate with their officers… it breaks down a lot of barriers."

According to Dudley, U.S. Southern Command and the Brazilian Navy are already working on another similar exchange sometime next year.

Similar U.S.-Brazilian military-to-military exchanges exist in other fields, and two Brazilian military doctors recently served aboard USS Kearsarge (LHD 3) during the four-month humanitarian/civic assistance mission through Latin America and the Caribbean. A team of Navy Seabees also embedded with a team of Brazilian Army engineers during most of November in Brazil.

For more news from Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command, visit www.navy.mil/local/cusns/.