Naval Hospital Bremerton deploying to Kuwait

It’s the largest group deployment that Naval Hospital Bremerton has seen since 2003 when more than 300 Fleet Hospital personnel were deployed to Rota, Spain.

In support of operations in Iraq, 72 hospital personnel are being deployed for six months to the U.S. Military Hospital Kuwait as the military ramps up its operations for the upcoming elections in Iraq. They will be treating soldiers, Marines and sailors with combat injuries as well as those who need treatment while being staged to go to or from Iraq.

“It is our time, we have an extremely enthusiastic group of people, a patriotic group,” said Capt. Mark Boman, executive officer of Naval Hospital Bremerton and commanding officer of Fleet Hospital Bremerton.

About half of the personnel will leave next month, while the remaining are scheduled to leave in October.

“(Personnel are) coming from everywhere around the hospital; corpsmen, nurses, doctors, dentists and support staff,” Boman said. “They’re from throughout the hospital and outlining clinics such as Bangor and PSNS (Puget Sound Naval Shipyard).”

He added that the good news is the hospital is not deploying as large a group as in the past, but because the hospital is relatively small the deployment will still have an impact. Plans are to have reservists fill in for those deployed. Monies also will be provided to contract out for additional

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