Landed in Micronesia!

A couple weeks with Pacific Partnership 2025

I flew into Chuuk last Saturday. A state in Micronesia, its main island of Weno has a small aiprort and a two-lane road that follows the circumference of its seven square miles. Weno is surrounded by smaller islands and reefs that dot Chuuk Lagoon, a remote zone of calm Pacific waters. The lagoon is famous for excellent diving, including the world’s best wreck diving among the vessels of a sunken Japanese fleet.

Every few years, the U.S. Navy returns to this site of victory as part of a global health and development mission called Pacific Partnership. The mission carries medical, environmental health, and engineering personnel to develop infrastructure and share clinical information with partners around various Pacific countries. I’m joining the crew to spend a couple weeks with local clinics and health outreaches.

Landing in Chuuk International Airport.

Last month, my medical residency program invited me to join the mission, and a couple of my resident colleagues will take my place at the next stops. After 36hrs of travel with layovers in Japan and Guam, I arrived at our ship docked in Weno port. Sleep in the triple bunks isn’t the best rest, but after some refreshing snorkeling over the shipwreck coral reefs, we hit the ground running.

I’ve already spent a few days in clinic with local physicians at the Chuuk state hospital, the main clinical site for the state’s population of 50,000 people. So far we’ve been showing them ultrasound techniques and ways to identify and drain abscesses. We also compared treatments for non-communicable diseases like asthma and diabetes.

Draining a neck abscess that appears to be scrofula (tuberculosis infection of a lymph node). Photo used with patient permission.

In turn, they’ve taught us about de-worming, leprosy, and tuberculosis. We rarely see leprosy if ever in the United States, so this trip has multiple once-in-a-lifetime possibilities all together!

The landscape is a contrast between the small islands and the vast ocean and night sky. This is the sort of mission that the public affairs crew encourages us to post about, so I hope to make a couple reflections on my time here soon. Thankfully, I’ve been having some interesting spiritual experiences starting before the trip that will help me receive the experience for all it offers. More on those later. In the meantime, reading and writing help me stay awake in the setting of sleep-inducing tropical heat, so please write to me any comments or news from your settings. Thank you for reading and for your prayers.

A 5000sqft island where we stopped for lunch during our snorkel excursion.