United States Gives Mobile Hospital to Tsunami Ravaged Indonesia

Military Medicine, Spring 2006

When the decimating tsunami hit Indonesia in 2004, Indonesian and U.S military medical planners immediately began working on rebuilding the Indonesian military's capacity to provide both immediate disaster relief as well as long term sustaining medical care to those impacted. Continuing that disaster relief relationship, the U.S Ambassador to Indonesia gave $11 million worth of medical supplies to the country's ministry of defense in late January.

The donated equipment would be sufficient to build a fully functional mobile hospital. The inventory consists of pulse meters, microscopes, suction pumps, refrigerated blood banks, a dental surgery unit, laboratories, x-ray units, and operating rooms. Shipped in 106 military containers, these supplies were distributed to 57 different places in the region. The equipment will be used by Indonesians to meet their own needs.

The supplies were part of unneeded United States military medical equipment. Rather than ship it back to the states as excess material, it went to Indonesia and provided humanitarian relief the region so badly needs. At the same time, the gesture was also one step towards normalizing military relations with the region.

After six years of strained relations because of human rights violations in East Timor, the U.S State Department moved to normalize relations with the battered region last year. "Our two presidents said last May in Washington that they wanted a normal military relationship between our two countries. We have been working steadily towards that goal, and since that time major steps were taken," Indonesian Ambassador B. Lynn Pascoe said in a recent interview. "We see this as very much part of that kind of close working relationship that we would like to do, a very normal relationship."

Reference:

Vought, Jeremy, "United States Gives Military Hospital to Indonesia," Defense Press Service, January 24, 2006.