The hospital ship working the Pacific
The industry that builds naval patrol vessels also built a hospital ship now working the Colombian Pacific, an ambulance launch and river transport vessels. A second hospital ship, for the Amazon, is under construction.
Across much of Colombia's Pacific coast and Amazon basin there are no roads. The river is the road and the sea is the road, and that makes a ship something other than transport: it is health infrastructure, it is connectivity, and in an emergency it is the only option. That is why the defense sector's naval industry builds hospital ships.
A ship already at work
The hospital ship built in partnership with the Ministry of Health now serves communities along the Colombian Pacific, and carries the name of Benkos Biohó, the maroon leader who in the seventeenth century founded the first free town in the Americas. A second hospital ship, bound for the Amazon, is under construction. Alongside them are an ambulance launch already in service, river transport vessels, and solutions for the San Andrés and Providencia archipelago.
The figure that measures it
The coastal and riverine Primary Health Care Centre reports a beneficiary population of 154,989, along with 454 direct jobs, 1,362 indirect jobs and 159 national suppliers. Those are the numbers of a public health programme executed by a defense sector company, which seems counterintuitive until the geography is understood: the institution with a shipyard and a presence along the coast is the Navy, not the health system.
Defense and development in the same hull
This line of work rests on the same three pillars by which the corporation defines its mission: sustaining the Navy's capabilities, generating socially useful solutions, and leading the development of the country's naval industry. The hospital ships are where all three meet, and probably the strongest answer this industry has when asked what a public shipyard is for.
