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From as ear­ly as 2 am yes­ter­day, peo­ple be­gan lin­ing up out­side the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts (NA­PA) in Port-of-Spain for free med­ical ser­vices pro­vid­ed by the US Navy hos­pi­tal ship, USNS Com­fort.

By the time screen­ing be­gan just af­ter 8 am, hun­dreds were wait­ing for treat­ment in ar­eas in­clud­ing adult and pae­di­atric med­i­cine, den­tal care, op­tom­e­try, phys­i­cal ther­a­py, women’s health, and der­ma­tol­ogy. But by mid­day, sev­er­al of those ser­vices were closed off.

In­side the venue, of­fi­cer-in-charge, Lt Com­man­der Thomas Rossiter, said the team catered for about 400–600 pa­tients per day and that by 11 am, rough­ly 150 had al­ready been seen.