Pacific Partnership Doctors Provide Emergency Medical Assistance

By By MC1(SW/AW) R. David Valdez, Pacific Partnership 2011 Public Affairs

FANAFO, Vanuatu (NNS) -- FANAFO, VANUATU – Navy Doctors from Pacific Partnership 2011's Advance Echelon (ADVON) team provided emergency care to two boys while conducting a site survey of the Fanafo Clinic, April 1.

Lt. Cmdr. Scott Wenger and Lt. Scott Humphrey, a pair of U.S. Navy doctors with the ADVON, noticed a young boy with blood dripping from his hand as they were surveying the facility.

The boy, a four-year old named Joel Warl, had a laceration from an accident with a bush knife, a tool commonly used in remote areas of Vanuatu.

"We noticed Joel and his mother sitting on the veranda," Wenger said. "We talked to his mother and the medical council members, and we got permission to treat him."

Wenger and Humphrey cleaned and bandaged the wound and told the mother to bring her son back to the clinic the next day.

While the doctors worked on little Joel, another woman brought in her two-year-old son, Michael Andrew with a gouge behind his ankle. He had slipped and cut himself while walking in the bush.

The Pacific Partnership doctors cleaned and bandaged the wound, but they decided he had to be taken to the hospital because of the size of the cut.

Accompanied by Zachariah Daniels, the local provincial project planner, Drs. Wenger and Humphrey drove the boy and his mother to the hospital in Luganville. A duty nurse stitched up the wound and then the two doctors drove him and his mother back.

Although the Navy doctors were following their Hippocratic oath to render aid to the wounded, they are in Vanuatu to prepare for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief mission know as Pacific Partnership 2011.

Pacific Partnership is Pacific Fleet's annual mission to improve interoperability for crisis situations, humanitarian and civic assistance, and disaster relief. The main body of the U.S. assistance is arriving on the amphibious transport dock ship USS Cleveland (LPD 7).

Pacific Partnership is a team effort between partner nations and host nations, which invite the multinational force to provide medical, veterinary, dental, and engineering subject matter expert exchanges. Pacific Partnership 2011 is the sixth iteration of this mission.

Over the past five years, Pacific Partnership doctors have seen more than 210,000 patients in 13 countries. Mission engineers have completed over 130 construction projects, including rebuilding medical clinics and schools. And mission veterinarians have inoculated hundreds of cows, pigs and dogs.