USNS Comfort Blogs, Tweets Operation Unified Response from Haiti

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The hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) now has a blog set up in Blogger. Two days before it arrived in Haiti, it posted about a boy airlifted to the ship while she was still in the Atlantic Ocean:   

100119-N-4995K-187 ATLANTIC OCEAN (Jan. 19, 2010) Hospital Corpsman 3rd Class Adam Buzzeo prepares medical equipment during the assessment of a six-year-old Haitian boy brought aboard the Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Comfort (T-AH 20). The boy, who was Comfort's first patient as part of Operation Unified Response, suffered an injury to his bladder and a hip fracture during an earthquake that struck Haiti on Jan 12. The boy is in the intensive care unit aboard Comfort in stable condition. Comfort is supporting Operation Unified Response, a joint operation providing humanitarian assistance to Haiti.

Day 1 in Haiti:

The USNS Comfort arrived off the coast of Port Au Prince this morning at approximately 0630 and dropped anchor just past 0800. Our wake up call on this day was a registered 5.9 earthquake that shook the ship as if it were exercising severe stern propulsion. Nonetheless, activity continued on pace as we were set to continue our patient transfer procedures.

The day after it arrived in Haiti, its crew delivered its first baby on board:

100121-N-6410J-483 PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (Jan. 21, 2010) – Medical professionals aboard USNS Comfort (T-AH 20) delivered baby Esther at 2:27 p.m. Jan. 21, She is the first baby delivered aboard the 1,000-bed floating hospital, which is in Haiti supporting Operation Unified Response. Weighing less than five pounds, baby Esther was delivered prematurely via cesarean section due to her mother having sustained a pelvis and femur fracture during the earthquake that struck Haiti Jan. 12. Despite being premature, she is healthy and was delivered without complications.

Read more here | http://haiticomfort.blogspot.com/

Follow the ship on Twitter here.

WBAL TV 11’s Lowell Melser is also onboard; follow him on Twitter here.

Don't you feel just a bit envious that we could not have anyone at US Embassy PaP to do the same thing? Not enough people. I know ... I know ...

Here are a few State Department bloggers/twitters that you might be interested in:  DipNote, KateatState, WHAAsstSecty, and USAID News. You can also follow my  USGov  Haiti Relief list here for both military and civilian twitters on Haiti effort.