4th Fleet Focus: Medical Diplomacy Takes Another Step

We didn't discuss it much, and I don't have a good reason why. The USS Boxer (LHD 4) recently completed the first leg of the Continuing Promise 2008 mission. The invaluable DoDLive, specifically Lt Cragg, did a really nice job getting the information from Capt. Peter Dallman, Commander, Amphibious Squadron 5, regarding the USS Boxer (LHD 4) deployment. In reading through the transcript of the blogger roundtable (PDF) two specific things jumped out.

The first is interesting. The Navy recognizes the importance of the NGOs, but for some reason this strikes us as a token presence of the potential capacity of what the USS Boxer (LHD 4) should be able to bring forward on this kind of deployment.

So ours was somewhat -- relatively limited. And like I said, it's difficult to say with a straight face that a four-month planning timeline is a short timeline, but the effect of that is it was a little late notification for us to go to partner nations -- I'm sorry, to nongovernmental organizations and to have them pitch in a lot for this fight. But they're certainly looking forward to follow-on missions.

And I think that's going to -- ultimately, that's going to be a golden key to our success, to do these types of missions. Project Hope folks and the Public Health Service goes through this kind of thing, obviously, on an ongoing basis as opposed to an episodic basis as we are doing it here on Boxer. They have experience in this. They're trained in it. And I think, in my opinion, the Navy wants to continue to ask them to get involved in this kind of thing.

And I think it's going to be good for both Project Hope and Public Health and other NGOs to continue to push people into these missions and push them forward to do this kind of work because, you know, they're good at it and we certainly can learn from them. They added a lot of value to our processes and our overall effort.

One would think Representatives would be aware of NGOs in their district that might be interested in getting involved in these types of deployments, indeed one thing that comes to mind is this might be a good way to get college students involved to community service through University programs. For example, pair a pre-med student with a corpsman, or work with fraternities and sororities at the national level to help raise money to send students each year as part of a summer program to participate in these types of deployments. Universities often discuss the importance of getting young men and women involved in summer programs that expand their experiences in a rapidly changing and globalized world, it seems this type of deployment would be an excellent way for college students to get involved in volunteer work.

Earlier in the roundtable it was mentioned that materials come from title 10 work, well if that is the case, then all the Navy is really looking beyond the specialized help is volunteers for labor and outreach, and we think the Universities offer an excellent resource for this type of thing. In the grand picture of US diplomacy, there are several faces. Governmental, Non-governmental, and Business are only three such faces, but the average citizen volunteer, particularly youth of college age and education, is another way to export the American spirit in diplomacy. Seems like the House of Representatives would be the right place to build the bridge between the DoD and the Universities in promotion of such a program.

Despite having so few people outside the Navy, this is a very impressive statistical impact.

We had 127 total surgeries onboard Boxer, 14,000 total dental procedures, 66 repairs to biomedical equipment in the various clinics and hospitals that we worked at.

A lot of this is done by corpsmen that don't have any parts, no kit, no tool bag, no anything. So I was amazed that they could repair that many.

We saw just under 4,000 optometry patients. We distributed about 3,500 glasses to those patients. We dispensed nearly 40,000 medications. We had a veterinarian team, and they saw just under 2,900 animals total. A lot of that was vaccinations and de-worming. And primary care saw just over 14,000 patients.

So total patients for the 28 mission days was just over 24,000 patients seen. And that results -- if you add in the classes, 123 classes, and 18,000 total students for those classes, then that's a total of 65,000 encounters during the 28 mission days.

Medical diplomacy at work in its early stages. Very impressive.

Blogger roundtable participants included the always insightful John of Argghhh, Chris Albon from War and Health, and Chuck Simmons of the North Shore Journal. Well done all, we thought the roundtable was very interesting.