US hospital ship will assist 11 countries in response to Venezuelan crisis.By Jim WyssEl Nuevo Herald | 24th May, 2019.Translation:The USNS Comfort, a hospital ship of the US Navy, is floating near Riohacha, Colombia, where it cares for the most needy, including Venezuelan migrants. Among the crew there are 14 Venezuelan doctors.Eleven countries, including Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Panama, will benefit from the Medical assistance mission to be carried out by a Navy Hospital Ship to respond to the effects of the humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, the Southern Command said Thursday.The USNS Comfort doctors will also provide their services on board or at local medical institutions in Grenada, Haiti, Jamaica, Saint Lucia, Saint Kitts and Nevis and Trinidad and Tobago."This deployment responds directly to the crisis provoked by the regime of (Nicolás) Maduro," said Admiral Craig Faller, head of the Southern Command, in a statement released Thursday on the mission, which had been announced last week. may.The Southern Command so far has not reported the countries in which this mission will be developed for five months and has not yet said the exact date of departure of the Comfort, which is based in Norfolk (Virginia), although it will be in the middle of June."The Comfort medical teams will work together with the medical professionals of the host nations who have absorbed thousands of Venezuelan migrants and refugees," Fuller said."The Venezuelan people flee desperately from their homeland in search of a better way of life. We are committed to finding ways to support the Venezuelan people and our regional partners who share the goal of seeing a legitimate and democratic government reinstated in Venezuela," said the head of the Southern Command.This is the seventh deployment of the Comfort since 2007.The previous mission took place between October and December 2018 in Ecuador, Peru, Colombia and Honduras, lasted 11 weeks and helped more than 26,700 patients in need.According to the statement, 599 surgeries were carried out on board.As with the last deployment, the plan is to send medical professionals from partner countries to join the effort to provide medical care to patients.It seeks to help "relieve the pressure in the national health systems" of the countries that have hosted the millions of Venezuelans who have fled the political, social and economic crisis in their nation.According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) this week, there are already 3.7 million Venezuelans who have left their country, due to an unprecedented political, social and economic crisis in the oil nation. SOURCE
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