LCDR Jamal Gwathney speaks with 3-year old girl and her mother at Charity Hospital in Guyana. Photo by U.S. Navy Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Steven King.

USNS Comfort

Gwathney examines a 7 month old child, one of a family of 7 children he treated that day. Location: Moulton Hall Elementary School, Trinidad and Tobago.

CAPT Ana Maria Puente (left) with nursing students from Suriname who served as translators aboard the USNS Comfort.

Gwathney and a Naval plastic surgeon remove a basal cell carcinoma and graft skin from the patient's neck to her left cheek.

Nine HRSA Commissioned Corps officers last summer served one-month deployments on the USNS Comfort as part of a humanitarian mission ordered by President Bush. The Navy hospital ship stopped at ports in 12 countries in the Western Hemisphere to provide free medical care for local residents.

During its four-month mission, the Norfolk, Va.-based Comfort provided oral and primary health care to residents of Belize, Guatemala, Panama, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Columbia, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.

The rotating team of health care providers aboard the Comfort consisted of two dentists, four dental hygienists, six physicians, two environmental health officers, a nurse, an engineer, a pharmacist and a veterinarian. They treated more than 98,000 patients in 380,000 patient encounters and performed 1,170 surgeries.

HRSA’s deployed officers were:

• Captain Arturo Bravo, a dentist;
• Lieutenant Commander Angela Girgenti, a dental hygienist;
• Lieutenant Commander Jamal Gwathney, a family physician;
• Commander Steven Johnson, a dentist;
• Captain Ana Maria Puente, a nurse;
• Captain Angel Rodriguez-Espada, a dentist;
• Commander Nita Sood, a pharmacist;
• Captain James Sutherland, a dentist; and
• Commander Thomas White, a physician.

Gwathney said the experience of treating patients in environments with relatively few resources “was rigorous and amazing at the same time.

“I was lucky enough to go out into host nations and treat patients in their own schools and clinics,” he said. “We treated everything from diabetes and hypertension to basal cell cancer and Hansen’s Disease (leprosy). Being able to help bring health care to people who really need it was unforgettable. We changed hundreds of lives!”

Gwathney boarded the Comfort in the Caribbean and treated patients in Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname. He works as a HRSA Ready Responder in an inner-city health center in Washington, D.C.

Puente was deployed during the same segment of the mission. She stayed on the ship helping patients who were checked into the “Comfort Inn,” a hospital ward where patients who went aboard for outpatient surgeries or overnight stays were treated.

“I’m grateful to have had the opportunity to be part of a mission that helped so many people,” said Puente, a senior advisor with HRSA’s Office of International Health Affairs (OIHA). “There were so many memorable moments. In Suriname, a group of nursing students came aboard to help translate Dutch, the national language. In between providing patient care, we had a chance to talk about nursing education and practice in our countries.”

Dental care was also a major mission priority, and HRSA’s Johnson was deployed to the initial team that left port from Norfolk and treated patients in Belize, Guatemala and Panama.

“Once we arrived in Belize, we had a very long ‘commute’ to our service site,” Johnson explained. “We got up at 4 a.m. to get ready, had chow at 4:30, then mustered at 5 to catch the launch for shore around 6. After reaching shore, we still had almost a 90-minute bus ride, much of it over dirt roads, to a remote location called Valley of Peace.

“What struck me most was that, regardless of the procedure you performed — fillings or even extractions — not a single child cried or was at all uncooperative,” recounted Johnson, who serves as HRSA Ready Responder at a health center in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho. “I remember thinking, ‘Boy, I wish they were like this back home!’ Despite the 110-degree temperature, every minute was worth it.”

During the four-month tour, Comfort dentists and staff treated more than 25,000 patients and provided 3,968 tooth extractions, 3,931 fillings, 7,042 sealants, and 20,561 fluoride applications.

Pharmacist Sood said she was gratified to join the Comfort’s mission in Ecuador, Colombia and Haiti — not only to assist the Comfort’s pharmacy staff, but also to help residents of the countries the ship visited on her leg of the humanitarian tour.

“I became a Commissioned Corps officer to help serve the public,” said Sood, a colleague of Puente’s in OIHA. “The Comfort’s mission took that pledge to the next level by going beyond in supporting global health.” Sood called the deployment “a great opportunity to demonstrate the goodwill of the United States.”