Navy ships ply medical diplomacy

MAJURO, Marshall Islands (AP) — Hellenty Phillips’ 6-year-old daughter, Marian, had a piercing earache, but her family couldn’t afford to pay $5 for her to see a doctor.

So Mrs. Phillips turned to doctors and nurses visiting her tiny Pacific island nation on a 10-day humanitarian mission organized by the U.S. Navy. For free, they diagnosed Marian’s ear infection and gave her ear drops and Tylenol.

Such scenes are being repeated across the Pacific and Latin America this year as the Navy deploys two ships to nearly 20 poor nations to treat ailments and repair infrastructure.

Behind the bandages and new school roofs is the hope patients and nations receiving care will become better friends of the United States.

Military commanders also hope the assistance will bolster weaker nations plagued by poverty and unemployment, preventing them from becoming breeding grounds for extremist ideologies and terrorists.

“It’s part of raising the bar throughout the region, raising the prosperity,” said Adm. Robert F. Willard, Pacific Fleet commander, during a visit to the Marshalls, a former U.S. territory, to see the work on the ground. “There are real strategic benefits to what we’re doing.”

Adm. Willard told sailors such missions would become an annual event for the Pacific Fleet and a core part of the Navy’s operations in coming years. U.S. commanders in the Middle East and elsewhere also are considering using the humanitarian ships to help boost security in their regions.

On Majuro Atoll, Mrs. Phillips and daughter Marian visited a makeshift clinic that one of the USS Peleliu’s medical teams set up under tents on a converted tennis court.

Chinilla T. Pedro, who interpreted for Mrs. Phillips and others seeking care, said some learned of the services by word of mouth.

“At the beginning today, they were kind of shy. They were coming around asking us, what is going on? Do we have to pay $5? We said no, treatment is free here, so slowly they started coming around,” Miss Pedro said.

Such clinics generally serve several hundred people per day. Those needing operations are referred to the Peleliu, where surgeons can repair hernias and perform cataract surgery.

The amphibious assault ship also has construction engineers on board to do infrastructure repairs. One team on the remote atoll of Arno Arno in the Marshalls worked to replace the roof on a schoolhouse for 80 students in grades one through eight.

At the end of the Peleliu’s five-nation tour this month, its 180 doctors, nurses and other professionals will have treated about 30,000 people. Its infrastructure projects in the countries visited — the Philippines, Vietnam, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and the Marshalls — are expected to affect the lives of 100,000 people.

Navy sailors have long done community service in their various ports of call in both rich and poor countries. But sending ships on monthlong missions takes military humanitarian work to a new level.