Naval Hospital Jacksonville Personnel Return From Humanitarian Mission

By Yan Kennon, Naval Hospital Jacksonville Public Affairs

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (NNS) -- Twenty-nine Naval Hospital (NH) Jacksonville staff members, including doctors, nurses, hospital corpsmen and administrators, returned Sept. 25 from a six-month deployment aboard the hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) in support of Continuing Promise 2015 (CP15).

NH Jacksonville personnel provided multiple services ashore and aboard the ship, including surgical procedures, intensive care, cardiology, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology, pharmacy, radiology, laboratory, biomedical engineering, material management, food services and medical logistics. Most of the staff operated from the ship's Military Treatment Facility--a shipboard hospital configured with specialized medical equipment and staffed by a multi-specialty medical team of uniformed and civilian health care providers.

CP-15 was comprised of a crew of 1,000 military and civilian personnel, including U.S. service members, partner nations and more than 400 non-governmental organization (NGO) volunteers. About 100 personnel were from the Jacksonville area.

During CP-15's six-month mission, the USNS Comfort visited Barbados, Belize, Colombia, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, Jamaica, Nicaragua and Panama. Her personnel treated more than 122,000 patients, conducted more than 1,200 surgeries and over 1,200 subject matter expert exchanges--covering medical, veterinary, engineering and environmental health topics--completed more than 90 engineering and building site projects, cared for and treated over 7,000 animals and conducted 44 community relations projects.

NH Jacksonville's priority since its founding in 1941 is to heal the nation's heroes and their families. The command is comprised of the Navy's third largest hospital and five branch health clinics across Florida and Georgia. There are more than 71,000 active and retired Sailors, Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, Guardsmen and their families enrolled with a primary care manager and Medical Home Port team at one of its facilities