by Brazil Riverine Mission Public
Affairs
AMAZON RIVER, Brazil – U.S. Navy Lt. John Sullivan, originally from Concord, New Hampshire, is a Chief Resident at the Naval Hospital Jacksonville Family Medicine Residency. He is currently deployed on NAsH Carlos Chagas, a Brazilian Naval Hospital ship, to provide care to the riverine community in the Amazon. As part of the U.S.-Brazilian knowledge exchange, he is teaching point-of-care ultrasound techniques to his Brazilian counterparts.“The ability to practice medicine in austere environments is critically important to military physicians,” Sullivan said. “Training on missions like this are one of the great things about training in a military residency.”
The Brazilian Riverine Mission is a joint effort between Commander, U.S. Fourth Fleet and the Brazilian Navy’s Ninth Naval District, whose mission is to provide care to local populations, build medical interoperability in support of joint humanitarian and disaster relief missions, and exchange medical knowledge. This is the third mission of its type and is serving as a platform to expand the U.S. Navy’s tropical medicine training opportunities, which will ultimately combine training at the Tropical Medicine Institute in Manaus followed by a joint medical mission within the Amazon River basin.