Aboard the USNS Comfort: Preparing lifesaving efforts
By Kyra Phillips
CNN
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CNN's Kyra Phillips
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CNN's Kyra Phillips visits the USNS Comfort, a U.S. Navy hospital ship providing every kind of medical and surgical care in a combat theatre (March 13)
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In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences in covering news and newsmakers around the world.
ON BOARD THE USNS COMFORT (CNN) -- I was amazed at the size and capabilities of the USNS Comfort. You get so used to seeing big, gray ships and then all of a sudden, in the middle of the Persian Gulf, you see this huge white vessel with massive red crosses on its sides, floating at sea.
The Comfort is one of two U.S. Navy hospital ships. Its sister ship, the USNS Mercy, lays berthed in San Diego, California. The goal of the Comfort here in the Gulf is to save lives and provide every and any kind of medical and surgical care in a war.
Capt. Charles Blankenship commands this ship and explained to me all the various specialties of the doctors and nurses here. I have met general surgeons; neuro- and thoracic surgeons; ear, nose and throat doctors; plastic and burn surgeons.
I spent most of my time getting to know two doctors, Cmdr. Claude Anderson and Capt. Jeffrey Georgia.
Anderson came here from Portsmouth Naval Hospital in Virginia with only a 48-hour notice. He is an orthopedic surgeon with a specialty in foot and ankle surgery. As you can imagine, if a soldier, sailor or Marine gets shot in the ankle, doctors like Cmdr. Anderson are a crucial asset. He can get them fixed up and back on the battlefield quickly, depending on the injury. He says approximately 50 percent of casualties are orthopedic in nature.
Georgia is a doctor who specializes in surgical radiology. He is equipped with a million dollars' worth of radiology equipment here, which I spent some time viewing. If someone was bleeding with a gunshot wound to the kidney and doctors were not able to do surgery right away, Georgia would be able to put a catheter into the patient's artery and show via X-ray where the "bleeders" are, exactly. The surgeons could then go right in and fix the problem.
The USNS Comfort -- made of nearly 70,000 tons of steel -- is as big as a large city hospital and capable of the same procedures.
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There are 12 operating rooms on this ship and 1,000 beds. Its medical treatment facility is among the largest trauma facilities in the nation, the size of any big-city hospital. There are more than 1,000 Navy medical and non-medical personnel here, and the ship is operated by 61 civilian mariners.
The Comfort responded to the September 11, 2001, attacks, and provided logistics support to disaster relief workers, police, firefighters and National Guardsmen.
Whether it's finding comfort in combat, in humanitarian efforts or in a disaster, USNS Comfort can be activated within five days. Its mission now is to help keep military, innocent civilians and even the Iraqi people alive if indeed a war breaks out.
