The USNS Comfort, which saw duty in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and the 2001 terror attacks in New York, is to arrive mid-morning in the flattened capital, Port-au-Prince. U.S. helicopters will ferry patients aboard, bringing relief to overloaded hospitals and clinics.
The area experienced a strong magnitude 6.1 aftershock Wednesday morning. The epicenter of the aftershock was 36 miles west-southwest of the capital and 6.2 miles deep, the United States Geological Survey said.
Before the aftershock, two severely injured Haitians were transported to the hospital ship as it sailed toward Haiti, according to the Department of Defense.
The patients -- a 6-year-old boy with a crushed pelvis and 20-year-old man with a broken skull and possibly fractured cervical vertebrae -- had been treated initially on the USS Carl Vinson, a U.S. aircraft carrier docked off the Haitian capital.
The Comfort is carrying nearly 550 doctors, nurses, corpsmen, technicians and support staff, who will be joined by 350 other medical staffers once the ship reaches Haiti, according to the U.S. Southern Command. The ship will have six operating rooms available and can house up to 1,000 patients.
The United States has been conducting some medical operations aboard the USS Carl Vinson, docked off Haiti's coast.
More than a week after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated the impoverished nation, efforts to get hospitals back into working shape were seeing some results, but the injured were still streaming in.
The area experienced a strong magnitude 6.1 aftershock Wednesday morning. The epicenter of the aftershock was 36 miles west-southwest of the capital and 6.2 miles deep, the United States Geological Survey said.
Before the aftershock, two severely injured Haitians were transported to the hospital ship as it sailed toward Haiti, according to the Department of Defense.
The patients -- a 6-year-old boy with a crushed pelvis and 20-year-old man with a broken skull and possibly fractured cervical vertebrae -- had been treated initially on the USS Carl Vinson, a U.S. aircraft carrier docked off the Haitian capital.
The Comfort is carrying nearly 550 doctors, nurses, corpsmen, technicians and support staff, who will be joined by 350 other medical staffers once the ship reaches Haiti, according to the U.S. Southern Command. The ship will have six operating rooms available and can house up to 1,000 patients.
The United States has been conducting some medical operations aboard the USS Carl Vinson, docked off Haiti's coast.
More than a week after a 7.0-magnitude earthquake devastated the impoverished nation, efforts to get hospitals back into working shape were seeing some results, but the injured were still streaming in.
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