US President Donald Trump said in a Truth Social post Sunday that he was sending a hospital ship to Greenland, alleging many people there are sick and not receiving care, even though both of the US Navy’s hospital ships were undergoing maintenance at a shipyard in Alabama at the time he posted.
Publicly available ship tracking data shows that one of the ships, the USNS Mercy, went out to sea Wednesday. It is not clear from the public data where the ship is headed, and Pentagon officials did not comment when asked about its destination.
Trump's post prompted a defence of Greenland’s health care system from its prime minister in the latest point of friction with Trump, who has frequently talked about seizing Greenland, which is a semiautonomous territory of NATO ally Denmark.
Here is a closer look at the facts:
Trump claims there is widespread illness
Referring to his special envoy to the Arctic territory, Trump said, "Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there".
THE FACTS: There have been no reports of major illnesses in Greenland lately and it was not clear which sickness Trump was referring to.
All of Greenland, which has a population of around 57,000 people, is served by the Queen Ingrid Hospital in the capital Nuuk, according to the Danish Medical Journal. The territory also has several regional health centres.
Most health care services in Greenland are free for citizens and permanent residents. This includes treatment by general practitioners, medical specialists and hospitals, health centres, prescription medicine, public dental care and home nursing care, according to the website of the Nordic Council of Ministers, which is the official body for intergovernmental cooperation in the Nordic Region.
In response to Trump’s post, Greenlandic Prime Minister Jens-Frederik Nielsen stressed the region’s free health care system and pointed out the differences in a jibe at the US system.
"We have a public health care system where treatment is free for citizens. That is a deliberate choice — and a fundamental part of our society," Nielsen said. "That is not how it works in the USA, where it costs money to see a doctor."
Despite free health service, there are "major public health challenges" on the vast island, according to the Centre for Public Health in Greenland.
Many of those challenges are related to undergoing "profound changes from a hunting society to a modern industrial and knowledge society" within a short period of time. Increasingly, people suffer from illnesses such as obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
Anna Wangenheim, Greenland's minister for health and persons with disabilities, recently posted an "urgent" request on her Facebook page saying the "national health service currently needs dentists for 3 different towns: Aasiaat, Paamiut, and Nanortalik".
Despite difficult access to medical services in remote areas and a shortage of staff, notable improvements have been achieved in Greenland, which only assumed political responsibility for its own healthcare system in 1992, said Lene Seibæk, a professor at the Institute of Health and Nature at the University of Greenland.
"In 2020, life expectancy in Greenland was approximately 71 years for men and 77 years for women, representing an increase of approximately six years for men and five to six years for women since the 1990s and exceeding the global average," Seibæk added.
Trump claims US hospital ship already headed to Greenland
"It’s on the way!!!" Trump wrote in his Truth Social post, saying one of the hospital ships already was headed to Greenland.
THE FACTS: Until Wednesday, both the USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort were at a shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, according to publicly available ship tracking data.
The Comfort arrived at the shipyard in the southern state on January 23 and is expected to remain there through April, according to the government contract for the work.
Repairs to the Mercy, which arrived there in August, have run past their expected completion date but the ship tracking data showed that the ship went out to sea Wednesday.
It is not clear from public data where the ship is headed, and Pentagon officials didn’t comment when asked. However, government contract records show the ship is slated for more repairs in March in a shipyard in the northwest state of Oregon.
Should the Mercy be directed to deploy to Greenland, it would still need additional time before being ready to deploy. The standard crew of a US hospital ship does not include the full complement of medical staff needed to man the vast medical facilities, which include 12 operating rooms and 1000 hospital beds. Normally, both ships would draw doctors, nurses, corpsmen and supplies from hospitals surrounding their home ports of either Norfolk, Virginia, or San Diego before setting sail.
Trump's envoy claims there is a service shortage
Trump applies pressure to his campaign to buy Greenland, despite widespread resistance. (Source: 1News)
Landry, the Louisiana governor serving as Trump's special envoy, echoed the president’s claim Monday on X that "many villages and small towns lack basic services that Americans often take for granted".
Landry added that "small settlements are without permanent doctors, diagnostic tools, or specialist care — forcing residents to travel great distances for vital treatments that should be available at home".
THE FACTS: While medical service is sometimes not physically available in all settlements of the vast territory, telemedicine plays an important role for people living remotely.
Patients in areas without the necessary health care also can be transported to the national hospital or regional facilities. In complex cases, patients can be flown to Denmark for medical treatment with the government paying for transportation and treatment.
Rural Americans, in comparison, have long faced challenges in accessing critical health care, in part due to financial inequities and long travel times. The barriers have worsened in the past decade as more maternity wards close, pharmacies struggle to stay in business and rural hospitals and clinics brace for federal Medicaid cuts.
Since 2010, 152 rural hospitals, many in the southern US, have cut inpatient services or closed entirely, according to data from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The expansion of telehealth can ease some inequities, experts say, but it is not a universal solution while many rural areas face provider shortages and unreliable broadband.
Landry’s state is no exception. Most of Louisiana's parishes are fully or partially rural and 73% of residents live in areas without enough primary care providers, 86% without enough dental providers and 93% without sufficient mental health providers, according to the state’s health department.
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