U.S. Navy doctors deliver Mercy at sea

Soraya Tampalan, a 13-year-old Filipina born with a disfiguring cleft palate, was nervous and began to cry just before she was to undergo corrective surgery aboard USNS Mercy, the U.S. Navy hospital ship.

“I want to look pretty,” she said.

Several hours later, a team of U.S. military doctors — Navy Capt. Craig Cupp, Air Force Maj. Richard Buck and Navy Lt. Cmdr. Graig Salt — said the operation was successful.

“I want to go back to school and get an education,” said Soraya, who had dropped out of school because of taunts by other children, according to Chief Petty Officer Don Bray, a Navy journalist.

The operation to correct Soraya’s cleft lip has been but one of perhaps 50,000 procedures the medical crew aboard Mercy have performed in recent weeks in Southeast Asia.

The 70,000-ton ship “is the most capable hospital on the planet — and you can move it around,” said Adm. Gary Roughead, who commands the U.S. Pacific Fleet and exercises operational control over Mercy.

The Mercy crews have treated goiter, examined eyes for glasses, soothed burns, set broken bones, pulled rotten teeth and given all manner of shots.

One team removed cataracts that had blinded Mara Harun, 60, for seven years.

Doctors and nurses from Mercy have taught classes and seminars with local medical people. Mercy’s technicians have repaired respiratory ventilators, anesthesia machines, X-ray equipment and operating-room lights in antiquated clinics in the Philippines, Bangladesh and Indonesia. Seabees from Navy construction battalions have fixed generators, repaired roofs and painted hospitals.

Not all has been successful. Four children with cleft palates had to be turned away because respiratory ailments precluded operations. Cancer patients could not be treated because that takes months.

A Navy doctor, Cmdr. Lynn Leventis, who had not seen a maternal death in 15 years, witnessed two Bangladeshi mothers die from infection after they had delivered their babies.

Soraya, Mrs. Harun and hundreds more were treated aboard Mercy when the ship was anchored off the island of Jolo, in the southwestern Philippines.

Jolo is in the Philippines’ poorest province, where 63 percent of the people live in poverty and the average life span is 52 years compared with the national average of 72.

Jolo also is in a region where a large majority of the population is Muslim. The chain of islands has been identified by U.S. intelligence as a route over which Muslim terrorists move among the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia.

Similarly, Bangladesh is dominated by Muslims and Indonesia is the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation.

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