The US Em­bassy has con­firmed that the Navy hos­pi­tal ship USNS Com­fort (T-AH 20) will vis­it Trinidad and To­ba­go in Sep­tem­ber.

The ship will dock at the La Brea port and con­duct a num­ber of surg­eries on­board, as well as pro­vide ba­sic med­ical ser­vices in Ce­dros, Debe, La Brea, and Point Fortin to the re­gion­al pop­u­la­tion.

The vis­it is part of the ship’s five-month de­ploy­ment to Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean on a med­ical as­sis­tance mis­sion.

“The Unit­ed States is com­mit­ted to in­creas­ing part­ner ca­pac­i­ty and re­gion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion for med­ical as­sis­tance and dis­as­ter re­lief – a con­tin­ued high pri­or­i­ty for the re­gion,” US Am­bas­sador Joseph Mon­del­lo said in the state­ment, as he thanked the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go for host­ing the ship.

Med­ical teams from Com­fort will be work­ing along­side host na­tion med­ical pro­fes­sion­als in pro­vid­ing a va­ri­ety of med­ical ser­vices to adults and chil­dren at the med­ical sites, as well as ba­sic sur­gi­cal care on­board Com­fort, help­ing to re­lieve pres­sure on na­tion­al med­ical sys­tems strained by an in­crease in cross-bor­der mi­grants.

Vice President Mike Pence and his wife Karen tour a surgery room on the USNS Comfort, Tuesday, June 18, 2019, in Miami. The hospital ship is scheduled to embark on a five-month medical assistance mission to Latin America and the Caribbean, including Trinidad and Tobago. At right is Adm. Craig Faller, commander of U.S. Southern Command. (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

AP

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, sev­er­al med­ical pro­fes­sion­als from part­ner na­tions will em­bark on Com­fort to join the ef­fort to pro­vide med­ical care to pa­tients through­out the re­gion.

The em­bassy says the de­ploy­ment re­flects the Unit­ed States’ en­dur­ing promise of friend­ship, part­ner­ship and sol­i­dar­i­ty with the Caribbean and the Amer­i­c­as.

It says that the USNS Com­fort op­er­a­tion is part of the deep­en­ing of US en­gage­ment in the re­gion un­der the health pil­lar of the US-Caribbean 2020 Strat­e­gy.

This marks the sev­enth hos­pi­tal ship de­ploy­ment to the re­gion since 2007 and the sec­ond to Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Com­fort med­ical teams will al­so pro­vide care in Colom­bia, Cos­ta Ri­ca, Do­mini­can Re­pub­lic, Ecuador, Grena­da, Haiti, Ja­maica, Pana­ma, Saint Lu­cia and St. Kitts and Nevis dur­ing this de­ploy­ment.