U.S. forces provide medical, dental assistance in Thailand

  • Published
  • By Capt. Johnny Rea
  • Cope Tiger Public Affairs
KORAT, Thailand (AFPN) --  U.S. forces participating in Cope Tiger ’04 here helped improve the health and welfare of more than 2,100 Thai villagers during a three-day medical and dental civic assistance program visit Feb. 20 to 22.

About 20 U.S. physicians, dentists and medical technicians -- comprising airmen, Marines and sailors -- provided care alongside their Royal Thai and Republic of Singapore air force counterparts for residents of seven rural villages.

“This was the first time we’ve had multilateral medical and dental participation in the history of the exercise,” said Master Sgt. Hubert Mussehl, Air Force medical liaison for Cope Tiger. “We had a huge turnout, as most of the villagers have had little, if any, medical and dental care.”

The free medical treatment for the villagers included 900 eye exams by U.S. optometrists.

“This was by far our most popular service,” said Sergeant Mussehl, deployed here from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam. “We dispensed about 650 reading glasses that were pre-ordered before the exercise.”

Family practice acute care included treating muscular skeletal pains as well as skin infections from ring worm, which is common in Thailand. Dentists also extracted 380 teeth from 318 patients.

Villagers waited several hours in sweltering heat and humidity to be seen, but did not seem to mind, Sergeant Mussehl said.

“We turned no one away,” he said. “Even with the language barrier, we knew they were extremely appreciative by the way they smiled and how they would hold our arms after being treated.”

The longstanding tradition of Cope Tiger compliments an already existing strong relationship with Thailand and Singapore, he said.

“Cope Tiger is much more than just flying,” Sergeant Mussehl said. “It’s important we build and maintain a great relationship with the local community wherever we’re deployed.”

More than 1,370 servicemembers from the air forces of the United States, Thailand, and Republic of Singapore, plus the U.S. Marine Corps, are taking part in the annual, joint/combined multilateral exercise. The two-week exercise ends Feb. 27.