The U.S. Military Sealift Command on June 23 issued the following news release concerning civil services mariners aboard the USNS Mercy, a hospital ship crewed by members of the SIU Government Services Division. USNS Mercy civil service mariners improve local school and health clinic in Vietnam
Civil service mariners joined the embarked crew aboard Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy to renovate a local school and health clinic in Nha Trang, Vietnam, June 22.
More than 30 crew members deployed to the Tinh Khanh Hoa rehabilitation and education center for children with disabilities and the Vinh Trung health clinic in support of Pacific Partnership 2008 – a four-month humanitarian and civic-assistance mission to the Republic of the Philippines, Vietnam, the Federated States of Micronesia, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea.
At Tinh Khanh Hoa, crew members renovated the school’s facilities by adding new handicapped accessible doors, sinks, light fixtures and handrails. Volunteers also painted window shutters and installed exhaust fans and a rubberized floor in common areas of the school.
With a medical staff of 15 and 34 teachers, the center serves 152 students below the age of 15, most of whom are deaf or blind.
“The students come from all over the province, and they are mostly from very poor families,” said the center’s Director Tran Thi Ngoc Lien. “We rely on help from outside sources to make improvements to the school.”
Continuing their efforts at the Vinh Trung village health clinic, a five-room clinic staffed by three medical support personnel who serve 7,000 residents, Mercy’s crew members updated lights, installed ceiling fans and repainted the clinic.
Volunteers also built a steel metal awning that will be used as an outdoor patient waiting area, and they poured concrete to make a sidewalk outside of the building.
“This was a joint effort to make a difference in the lives of Vietnam’s children,” said Mercy’s 2nd Assistant Engineer Nick Washington, a civil service mariner with MSC.
Pacific Partnership is a mission that is taking medical, dental, veterinary, engineering and civic assistance to Southeast Asia and the Western Pacific to build on relationships that have been developed during previous similar missions, such as the 2004 tsunami relief efforts, Mercy’s 2006 deployment and USS Peleliu’s 2007 mission.
MSC operates approximately 110 noncombatant, merchant mariner-crewed ships that replenish U.S. Navy ships, conduct specialized missions, strategically preposition combat cargo at sea around the world and move military cargo and supplies used by deployed U.S. forces and coalition partners.
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