Narrative
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Project narrative
On July 3, 2023, Peace Ark, a Chinese naval hospital ship set off from a military dock in Zhoushan to perform the Harmonious Mission 2023 program, which involved visiting Kiribati, Tonga, Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands, and Timor-Leste. On September 7, 2023, China provided naval hospital ship "Peace Ark" to Timor-Leste for friendly visits and humanitarian medical services. During the seven-day medical service, the hospital ship had registered a total of 10,947 diagnoses and treatments, 6,371 auxiliary examinations, 13 inpatients and 50 surgeries, which is the highest number of medical consultations per day and per station during the mission. Moreover, Peace Ark dispatched six specialist medical teams to conduct medical tours to the Ministry of Defense and Security, the National Police Agency, Naval Command, in the Liquica and Ataúro Island in Timor-Leste. The medical team consisted of 126 members (Source ID #202824) in 16 different clinical and auxiliary departments (Source ID #202819). They are from China's Naval Medical University, Joint Logistic Support Force and the navy under the PLA Eastern Theater Command. Peace Ark stays in each country it visits for seven days, conducting medical procedures, cultural exchanges, and some military training with local armed forces. Peace Ark was commissioned in 2008 and has visited 43 countries and regions since (Source ID #202824). At 14,300 pounds, it is larger than a typical Chinese destroyer (Source ID #202819). It has multiple operating rooms and nursing stations and a blood bank and can handle up to 1,000 patients at a time (Source ID #202819). It had other state-of-the-art medical facilities as well, like CT, DR, color Doppler ultrasonography, gastrointestinal endoscopy, automatic biochemical analyzers, multifunctional monitors, ventilators, and autoclave cabinets. It had 2,600 sets of medical devices of about 250 different types (Source ID #203007).