The hospital ship USNS Mercy departs Naval Base San Diego to kick off Pacific Partnership 2024, Tuesday, Oct. 10, 2023. (David Negron/U.S. Navy)
A U.S. Navy hospital ship steamed out of San Diego Bay this week and began making its way across the Pacific, where it plans to stop at island nations as part of an annual disaster preparedness mission.
The USNS Mercy leads Pacific Partnership 2024. Equipped with 1,000 hospital beds and a crew of 800 civilian and military personnel, including doctors and dentists, the ship will host symposiums and training events throughout the region, the Navy said in a Wednesday news release.
The Mercy plans stops in the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Palau and Micronesia during the multi-month mission, which aims to improve “disaster response preparedness, resiliency and capacity” and strengthen international relationships, according to the release.
“This mission reflects the continued commitment to the region and dedication to disaster-response-readiness from the United States, our partners and allies, and the host nations,” U.S. Navy Capt. Brian Quin, the mission commander, said in the release.
In August 2022, the Solomon Islands government welcomed the Mercy on its Pacific Partnership tour, but the same day denied entry to the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Oliver Henry and British patrol vessel HMS Spey.
The U.S. at the time suspected the Solomons’ warming ties with China lay behind the denial.
The Navy and Coast Guard stepped up outreach efforts to Pacific island nations partly to offset China’s campaign to extend its influence in the region.
This year, the 2024 mission overlaps the 2023 visits, which kicked off Aug. 9 in Phu Yen, Vietnam, according to a Pacific Partnership press release that day. The overlap is a first in the mission’s 18-year history, according to Ensign Madison Kwok, spokeswoman for Pacific Partnership.
More than 1,500 personnel are traveling aboard the dock landing ship USS Pearl Harbor and the littoral combat ship USS Jackson, Kwok said in an email Thursday.
They come from Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, United Kingdom and the United States.
Participants have also visited Palau, Malaysia and the Philippines, according to U.S. Indo-Pacific Command.
Personnel are visiting Papua New Guinea this week, where they are slated to host several seminars and repair a local schoolhouse, the Navy said in a news release Tuesday.
First developed in response to the December 2004 tsunami that devastated parts of South and Southeast Asia after a 9.1 magnitude earthquake struck Indonesia’s coast, Pacific Partnership has evolved to focus more on building relationships between nations rather than providing direct medical care, according to the Navy.
