Military Medical Comfort

The United States Navy is providing Military Medical Relief to poor countries around the world. We filmed aboard the ship USNS Comfort, as it brought medical relief and surgical care to local communities in Guatemala. US Military staff from the hospital ship carried out over a thousand operations on local people. USNS Comfort is over 270 metres long, thirty-two metres wide and as tall as a ten-storey building. The former oil tanker has 12 operating rooms and half a million doses of medicine. Its primary role is to provide medical support for the US military in times of war. Throughout their five-month-long humanitarian mission, surgeons performed over a thousand procedures and set up temporary medical sites in nearby villages. People who need surgery are transferred onto the ship, which can treat up to 100,000 patients.