The Netherlands is one of the many partner nations of Continuing Promise ’09 and have committed to have a team of medical personnel onboard USNS COMFORT for the entire duration of the 4-month, 7-nation humanitarian deployment to the Caribbean and Latin America. They plan on doing so by dispatching 3 teams of personnel that will serve onboard COMFORT for approximately 6-7 weeks at a time.
According to CDR. Tom Donahue, MC, USN and COMFORT’s Director of Surgery, the Dutch handled “more cases as a group than any other service. They thought us a lot. I know we learned alot.”
They were onboard COMFORT for the first three stops of CP 09 which were Haiti, Dominican Republic, and Antigua & Barbuda. During this time, they performed approximately 23% of all the surgeries onboard COMFORT. Moreover, they worked so well together as a team that everyone thought they had all worked together for years in the Netherlands. In reality, they had all first met as a group at the airport.
BZ to the Netherlands for sending such a fine team to USNS COMFORT!