Description
Military Medical Relief if being provided by the United States Navy to poor countries around the world. We filmed aboard the USNS Comfort as it brought medical relief and surgical care to local communities in Guatemala. US Military staff from the hospital ship carried out over a thousand operations on local people.
USNS Comfort is over 270 metres long, thirty-two metres wide and as tall as a ten-storey building. The former oil tanker has 12 operating rooms and half a million doses of medicine. Its primary role is to provide medical support for the US military in times of war.
Throughout their five month long humanitarian mission, the surgeons perform over a thousand procedures, including a life-changing operation on Carlos, a 10-year old boy. We filmed this operation.
We also filmed as the hundreds of highly trained officers, nurses and health workers headed to shore at the crack of dawn. They had set up temporary medical sites in nearby villages. People who need surgery are transferred onto the ship. The ship can treat up to 100,000 patients and the ship carries one of only two floating CT scanners in the world.