Years after working aboard U.S. Navy hospital ships, Dr. John Jarstad still occasionally receives a call in the middle of the night. It’s likely to be a doctor he trained in Asia who is performing a surgery and wants his advice.
Jarstad can get online immediately and observe by video until the procedure is complete.
The collaboration between two doctors on opposite sides of the world is an unexpected benefit of the medical missions of the U.S. Navy hospital ship Mercy and its sister ship Comfort. The ships have treated hundreds of thousands of patients around the world.
For Jarstad, a surgeon and ophthalmology professor at the University of South Florida, journeys aboard Navy medical ships provided an opportunity to treat patients and collaborate with or train doctors in several countries, including the Philippines, Indonesia and Ecuador.
Medical care offered during his 2012 journey aboard the Mercy ranged from treating infections to surgeries, he said. In Asia, he trained doctors on eye surgery techniques in countries including Vietnam and Indonesia.
“They would just rave about the training and the fact that the U.S. would come and” conduct trainings, Jarstad said. The exchange “built such a great bridge of friendship,” he added.
Recently the U.S. Navy commissioned three new ships to deliver hospital-level care to partners around the world. Smaller than the hospital ships, the new ships, to be commissioned in May 2030, will be able to respond more rapidly and bring humanitarian assistance and disaster relief to more places.
“USNS Bethesda will serve as a beacon of hope, of comfort, of mercy, and of the American people’s enduring friendship to all she supports around the globe,” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro said January 8.
Today we celebrated the future USNS Bethesda (EMS 1). Thank you @govwesmoore & @DawnFlytheMoore for joining me at @NICoEPage to honor the legacy & dedicated @NavyMedicine professionals of @nsabethesda. pic.twitter.com/57nEpLEbLS
— Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro (@SECNAV) January 9, 2024
At the ceremony, Del Toro named one of the ships the USNS Bethesda in honor of medical workers at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, that has served U.S. war veterans for decades and now houses the National Walter Reed Military Medical Center.
Each new ship will have a helicopter landing pad and three operating rooms, as well as facilities for delivering babies and for providing primary, dental and mental health care.
And the ships will continue the medical missions of the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort, which Jarstad says have served as a bridge from U.S. doctors to international colleagues.
“There’s a lot of good exchanges of information,” he said. “Every place I go I learn something from the local doctors.”