The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) hospital ship Peace Ark is presently in Cape Town’s Victoria & Alfred basin with Chinese medical personnel working alongside their SA Military Health Service (SAMHS) counterparts providing a variety of medical services aboard and ashore.
Officially Daishan Dao, a Type 920 PLAN hospital ship, she sails under the name Peace Ark during peacetime with the Cape Town stop one of 15 in the Indian and South Atlantic oceans during her current cruise, which started in June.
The Chinese hospital ship is in South Africa for the first time, according to Defence and Military Veterans Minister Angie Motshekga, for a humanitarian and medical exercise with South African military medics. Further South African hands-on medical involvement before Peace Ark departs on Wednesday (28 August) comes from the Western Cape provincial health department.
Apart from providing medical services, the exercise will, according to Minister Motshekga “improve medical skills transfers between the two militaries”. Joint medical consultation, medical technologies, skills and other related activities in the medical field are given as examples with “enhanced diplomatic relations” listed as another benefit from the exercise.
Reports have it Peace Ark personnel treated 1 658 patients in a day while berthed in Maputo on 14 August – a new record for the ship. Surgeries ranging from cataract removal to sub-mandibular gland and calculus, better known as stone, for example kidney, extraction were also successfully done. During her week long visit to Mozambique, Peace Ark treated more than 7 300 patients. Before Mozambique she was in Madagascar and Seychelles.
All told, Peace Ark is staffed by a thousand plus people made up of ship’s crew and military medical personnel. She has 300 beds, 20 intensive care beds, eight operating theatres, 17 clinical departments and five auxiliary diagnostic departments. An onboard medical rescue helicopter is used to airlift patients.
