By Ray Levy-Uyeda
The scene is familiar: A hospital bed, a respirator, medical personnel in full PPE. But while the attending doctor is from San Francisco, California, the hospital is located 1,000 miles away, in the middle of 27,000 miles of vast, desert land.
The Navajo Nation, which spans Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico, is self-governed but receives economic support from the U.S. government. However, with federal spending on health services historically low for Native, compared with non-Native populations throughout the country, the Navajo Nation has been underfunded and understaffed for years. And despite being early to impose regional curfews and having the country’s highest per capita testing rate, for most of 2020 the Nation suffered from one of the highest infection rates of COVID-19 known locally as Dikos Ntsaaígíí-19 or Big Cough-19. Home to 156,000 people, the region has already seen nearly 26,754 positive cases of COVID-19 and 1,170 deaths, a result of multiple form
San Antonio-based Army North dispatches medical personnel to New Mexico
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U.S. Army North said Wednesday it was deploying military medical personnel to battle the coronavirus pandemic in the Navajo Nation in New Mexico.
It sent elements of Task Force 51, a deployable command post, to Farmington on Friday. Only days earlier, the command ordered military medical specialists to four hospitals in Wisconsin. Some in those task forces came from San Antonio.
Army North, the Joint Force Land Component Command of U.S Northern Command, will oversee a military operation that will bring 25 Navy personnel who are part of four Rapid Rural Response teams.