GC Navy sailors join Comfort

The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) is gearing up with supplies and personnel to respond to the humanitarian needs in Puerto Rico. The ship is preparing to get underway by Sept. 30, according to a Defense Department spokesperson. Comfort is taking on supplies and boarding personnel at Naval Station Norfolk, Va. The ship is an afloat, mobile, acute surgical facility, providing a level of medical care found at a major shore-base Navy medicine hospitals. Comfort’s homeport is in Baltimore, Md. During normal pier side operations, Comfort has some 50 personnel who crew the ship, keeping it ready to deploy. When activated, according to the Navy, Comfort’s crew grows to about 1,200 personnel. (Source: Maritime Herald 09/27/18) Gulf Coast Note: The Naval Hospital Pensacola, Fla., command has 19 sailors, including numbers from its Naval Branch Health Clinics at Meridian, Miss., and Millington, Tenn., joing up with Comfort in Norfolk. The Gulf Coast NavMed specialties include nurses, corpsmen, pediatrician, family medicine physician, and culinary specialists. The senior officer and senior enlisted person are Cmdr. Kathryn Garner, a medical-surgical nurse, and Chief Hospital Corpsman Jonathan Pruss., according to a spokesperson with NH Pensacola.