US Navy Environmental and Preventive Medicine Unit Six (NEPMU-6) conducted classes on environmental health, industrial hygiene and pest management throughout the week of July 21 to hospital corpsman aboard the Military Sealift Command hospital ship USNS Mercy (T-AH 19) during Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) Exercise 2014.
Mercy, with the help of NEPMU-6, is provided these lectures and hands-on training to further the skillsets of Mercy’s corpsmen.
“These classes offer a general overview of what we do with respect to preventive medicine,” said Lt. Cmdr. Toby Palmer, an entomologist with NEPMU-6. “It will also help them become better corpsmen who will know how to prevent diseases and prevent injuries further down the road.”
Many of the corpsmen in the class learned new and relevant information not typically received in a medical work environment.
Topics discussed throughout the week ranged from water quality and shipboard sanitation to infections and diseases transferred by insects.
This year’s RIMPAC marks the first time in the exercise’s history that hospital ships have participated. Twenty-two nations, 49 ships and submarines, more than 200 aircraft and 25,000 personnel are participating in RIMPAC exercise from June 26 to Aug. 1, in and around the California coast and Hawaiian Islands.