China sends hospital ship to Philippines

China has dispatched a state-of-the-art hospital ship to the Philippines to help the victims of Typhoon Haiyan.

The Peace Ark, which is a 300-bed floating navy medical facility, left an army base on Zhoushan Island, off the eastern province of Zhejiang, on Thursday.

“With our efforts, we will make great contributions to the relationship between the Chinese people and the Philippine people,” said Shen Hao, deputy chief of staff of the East China Sea Fleet and commander of the mission.

“We will do our utmost to make contributions to the Philippine side.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said that a first crew of relief workers left on Wednesday.

“China has always been concerned about the Philippines typhoon disaster,” said the ministry’s spokesman Hong Lei.

The ship is expected to arrive in the typhoon-ravaged Philippines in three or four days. It will join an international flotilla of naval ships, which are delivering food, water and medicine to victims of the deadly storm.

According to authorities, the Peace Ark will initially be stationed in the Philippines’ Samar province, but how long it stays in the Southeast Asian country will depend on the situation.

The ship is said to have over 100 doctors and nurses on board and is capable of handling eight surgeries at the same time.

The Peace Ark has recently come back to China after a four-month deployment to Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean, where it treated thousands of patients.

Haiyan, one of the strongest storms recorded on earth, pounded the eastern Philippine island of Samar during the early hours of November 8, before barreling into six central islands.

An average of 20 typhoons hit the Philippines every year. Typhoon Bopha last year flattened three coastal towns on the southern island of Mindanao, killing 1,100 people.