![\"comfort\"](\"http:\/\/s.wsj.net\/media\/comfort_D_20100121152223.jpg\")
The USNS Comfort, a converted supertanker that is now a Navy hospital ship, opened its 12 operating rooms and 1,000 beds to Haiti earthquake victims even before it dropped anchor off Port-au-Prince.<\/p>\nThe USNS Comfort, a converted supertanker that is now a Navy hospital ship, opened its 12 operating rooms and 1,000 beds to Haiti earthquake victims even before it dropped anchor off Port-au-Prince.<\/p>\n
Patients started landing Tuesday night via helicopter, including some that had been temporarily cared for on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson<\/a>. Among the first dozen patients, one was 82 years old; another was 72 hours old, the Miami Herald <\/a> reported today.<\/p>\n Sailing from its home port of Baltimore, the Comfort arrived short-handed, with about 350 crew members still expected to arrive in the next few days to bring the ship up to capacity, the Baltimore Sun<\/a> said. The ship, which was launched as a supertanker in 1976 and converted to a hospital ship in 1987, normally has a crew of 61 civilians, 259 Navy support personnel and 956 Navy medical staff, according to this Navy fact sheet<\/a>.<\/p>\n Among the Navy docs aboard is Mill Etienne, a Haitian-American neurosurgeon, who was named chief of its Comfort’s ethics committee for the mission to deal with issues such as performing surgery on children, according to the Sun. “We’ve stressed to the staff that though we’re on a humanitarian mission, we don’t want to be paternalistic,” the paper quoted Etienne as saying. <\/p>\n The Comfort is no stranger in Haiti, having visited there most recently in April as part of a four-month tour with various Latin American and Caribbean stops. Its missions<\/a> also include several earlier trips to Haiti and it has seen service in the Persian Gulf, in New York after 9\/11 and along the Gulf Coast after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. <\/p>\n Picture of Comfort anchored off the coast of Haiti: AP Photo\/Navy Visual News Service<\/em><\/p>\n The USNS Comfort, a converted supertanker that is now a Navy hospital ship, opened its 12 operating rooms and 1,000 beds to Haiti earthquake victims even before it dropped anchor off Port-au-Prince. Patients started landing Tuesday night via helicopter, including some that had been temporarily cared for on the aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson. Among […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":792,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-210015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210015","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/792"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=210015"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/210015\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=210015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=210015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=210015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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