 really gives me a great pleasure to welcome you to our health team and also to St. Lucia. I had the pleasure in 2019 of working with the US Comfort Mission and this was an amazing experience for us in St. Lucia. We got the opportunity for almost 5,000 persons to get treatment from ophthalmology to dental to medical to surgical procedures on the ship. I also got the amazing opportunity of visiting the ship and seeing what a hospital on a ship looks like. I got to experience the ethical values that the US medical mission holds. I also saw the level of organization and coordination and discipline with which you work for. As you get used to us in St. Lucia, you'll see one of the things, time may not always be time, but when you say 800 hours, it's 800 hours. So we really got to learn a lot from you. So today, I'm really happy that after having discussions with you over the last six months to actually see you here in person to work with you. So I not only say welcome and as we would say in Cuiol, Benvini Settlesi, apart from welcoming you, I also want to from very early to say thank you to you. During the last three years, as you know, most countries experience the effects of COVID. So we have had backlogs of surgical cases and we also had very long lists of patients who require dental care, especially some of our differently abled persons who needed to have certain surgical procedures done. So this really provides us with an excellent opportunity to provide this care and especially to those who are less fortunate who may not be able to afford and may not get the opportunity. It really gives us an opportunity to provide that level of care and service to them. So I look forward to the surgical mission, the dental mission and also for the expertise and the training that you will be providing to our teams here on Ireland. So I wish you a great mission. As usual, our teams are very excited and we look forward over the next two weeks to work closely with you as we make this mission a success. Thank you. My task is a very simple one. To welcome the U.S. medical mission here, 2023, here at the William Heights Medical Complex. And to say how pleased we are to have you here providing this humanitarian support to the people of St. Lucia. We anticipate over the next two weeks about 60 patients would receive surgery here of different types. I assure you that the theatres here are second to none. You would have a team of dedicated and well-trained nursing staff and sociologists and surgical staff as well. We look forward to the sharing of expertise over the next two weeks. Yesterday we had an awesome opportunity to interact with major Williams in dealing with the logistics and supply management. And I have to say that this mission will contribute just in excess of a million dollars, a million U.S. dollars to the people of St. Lucia. The supply is a loan of 250,000 U.S. and just overheard relating to the team is about 750,000 dollars. So we did a very, very happy for this gesture of philanthropy. Good weather outside, a cozy environment inside, and we really look forward to a successful mission. Any issues that you have that you wish for us to address, please feel free to come to my office and we'll address it. So thank you very much and welcome. Protocol haven't been established. I bid everyone a good morning. And of course, like Missions Felix indicated, it's a very happy and exciting morning for us today as we welcome this United States military medical mission to St. Lucia. Basically for the ministry, we welcome this initiative as another strategy to improve access to quality health care services with reduced out-of-pocket expenditure to our population. The initiative will provide a measure of relief to the health care system by accommodating a number of surgeries, which have been elective surgeries, which have been outstanding, as well as dental procedures throughout the island. And of course, like Dr. Belma explained with the COVID-19 pandemic, we had quite a bit of a backlog for those surgeries. And so we look forward to your assistance and support in working our patients through those surgeries and of course having successful treatments and conclusions. Basically, the key theme of this mission for us is equality. Equality of access to the service. And we have facilitated this through the referral system that we established in our primary health care system so that persons from all around the island were able to access our district medical officers, physicians, and obtain a referral in cases where your intervention would have been required. So yes, it is based on two major areas in the north of the island. We have, of course, OKEU Hospital as well as Le Corrie Wellness Center. But at the same time, you will have patients from all around the island. And so this is a key theme. And it is in keeping with our thrust during this year to implement universal health care. It is one form of universal health care, which you have very much enabled us to be able to provide. So at this stage, I will not be very long. I'm not sure whether this is your first visit to St. Lucia, but I really do hope that among yourselves and with the hard work that you do that you will have an opportunity to see a little bit of our beautiful island. And maybe the next time you return will be on a more pleasurable trip. But in the meantime, we thank the government of the United States for this military mission, which has been conducted through the United States military. And of course, this great measure of assistance in terms of the procedures, the conduct of surgeries, the dental care, as well as the supplies, as Dr. James indicated, I wish to welcome you to St. Lucia, welcome you to the hospital, to our health care system, and to say a very big thank you to you for this mission and to wish all the success. Our team at the ministry is available, as has been with Dr. Belma, and we will continue to be available to guide you, to support you, to learn from you, and of course, to make the mission a success. Thank you very much. Good morning. I'm Lieutenant Colonel Gentry Mobley. I have the pleasure of being the lead planner of the Lesser and Tillies Medical Assistance Team with Dr. George and Dr. Charles and both Dr. Charles's, Dr. Frame. Like it's been a pleasure to do the planning. And then they said, hey, you want to go on it? And I said, yes, please. Love to go out and execute the mission. So I have the pleasure of representing the 29 members from the United States Army and the United States Air Force that are sitting behind you. Mr. Minister, thank you so much for allowing us to come into the country. It's so beautiful. I'm not sure how you get up and go to work every day whenever you have kind of weather outside. It's absolutely beautiful. But we're really excited to be here. And thank you for allowing us to be here. Dr. James, thanks for let us use your facilities. We're very excited to be working out of here and alongside that partnership with your surgeons, with your nurses, with your anesthesiologists, with your ER team. Dr. Frame, I'm not sure she's able to make it yet, but working with her over in Leclerie and getting ready for the Leclerie operations has been a real pleasure. We're very excited about that. For my team, sitting behind you, we have 10 members from the United States Army. So if you guys just kind of want to raise your hand real quick, I know you'll never like to be recognized. Yeah. So the Army team represents our surgical and our ER team. So really our medical side of the team. So with our two surgeons, Dr. Hetz and Dr. Bingham, if you all don't mind raising your hands real quick. So those two individuals have accomplished over 140 surgeries in the last five weeks. So the whole team has accomplished 140 surgeries in the last five weeks. So they've been really after it. We have two anesthesiologists, or nurse anesthesiologists, CRNAs. We have two OR techs. So run behind the scenes back there in the OR and then two nurses, as clinical nurses as well. There's just a pleasure of a team to work with. Most of them are from the same unit out of a joint-based Lewis McCord, with Dr. Hetz being the only one coming out of San Antonio and Texas there. And then on top of that, we have two ER doctors, Dr. Braun and Dr. Lu, who are super excited about just finding any way they can to get into the ER and engage and spend a little time working side-by-side with the residents and the doctors that are down there. On the other side of the room, looks like they split themselves up a little bit, Air Force Army. There's no contention there at all. On the other side of the room we have the front row here is all my dental. So Dr. Jekai. So bracketed by Dr. Jekai and Dr. Reed are two dentists. We have two technicians or, sorry, dental assistants, is really what they prefer to, and a hygienist. So they're all here. They're super excited. I kind of threw a little curveball at them last minute and say, hey, we're gonna do a little outreach and head on down to Sufrey. So they're kind of used to it. They've really enjoyed the opportunities to engage with kids and engage with the underprivileged individuals. So very excited about that. And then we have none of that is possible with our medical support team. So led by Dr., sorry, Dr., hey, congratulations. Led by Major Williams. So he came as part of our advanced team and was working to start getting operations set up for us here. But led by Major Williams, a six band team of just four courses. One of them is really one of them and one of them in training is a biomedical technician. So finding equipment that needs to be worked on and see what we can do to get it fixed. So they've done a ton of work in the last over the last five weeks. And then the last is just my team, the mission team that supports the rest of everybody else. So I have a two PA officers. So my my camera, my wonderful camera woman over there. Yes, exactly. Senior and Alexis takes some amazing photos. So we're excited to share those with you guys. And then Dr., everybody's a doctor today, man. It's a Captain Young, our PAO. She's not here at the moment. And then we have a couple force protection guys with this and then a contracting specialist for anything that we run into where we just need to we need to get something under contract. Very, very helpful. But this this team has been on the road for the last couple, well, about a month and a half now. We started this whole mission, Lesser and Tillies Medical Assistance Team started in the Lesser and Tillies with St. Lucia of Arbados, like as the as the target, and then added on Suriname and Guyana. So we spent a few weeks in Suriname, a few weeks in Guyana. And then I think most of these people signed up because we're gonna become a St. Lucia. So we're very, very excited to be here. It's all about strengthening partnerships. It's all about exchanging of that knowledge of working side by side with your doctors and your dentists and your surgeons. And that's what the team is most excited about. Not just going in an operating room and cutting on some cutting on some people but leaving lasting knowledge and learning. They'll let them tell them their own stories as they meet with your teams, but learning from your surgeons and your dentists and your doctors as well. But we're very excited to be here. And please let us know if there's anything else we can do for you. Thank you. Let me at this time welcome every one of you to St. Lucia. I am hoping that there are many of you who are coming here for the first time. And I wish you all the pleasant memories when you live. But in a very special way, I wish to recognize our Permanent Secretary, Ms. Jenny Daniel. I also wish to recognize the Team Leader, Lieutenant Colonel, Gentry Mobley, Lamar Mission Commander, 774 Expeditionary Squadron Commander. Let me recognize our Chief Medical Officer, also Dr. Jims of the Millennium Heights Medical Complex, Dr. Lisa Charles, the other medical professionals here with us. We have several of them, doctors and nurses from St. Lucia. Let me recognize all of the medical professionals and support staff, supporting team members from the United States of America. I wish to welcome you here. And I want to welcome you on behalf of the Prime Minister Honorable Philip J. Pierre, the Cabinet of Ministers, and also on behalf of all St. Lucia. We are indeed very grateful for your generosity. We are very grateful for your contribution to humanity. Because as you may well know, I'm sure you've done your research. We have so many challenges in our healthcare system. And anytime we get support from friendly governments, from partners, it is always a pleasure for us to work in partnership with all those who want to assist us. I want to take this opportunity to thank you and also to thank the United States government for all of the assistance which we have received over the years. You may have heard or read about the stories of the St. Jude Hospital. And the St. Jude Hospital was gifted to us by the United States of America. All of the stories about St. Jude really started with the United States of America. So we wish to thank you even from way back when. And we have had a very long partnership with the United States of America. More recently, our struggles with the COVID-19 pandemic, we received, you know, several grants of vaccines through the COVAX facility, a 40 bed field hospital, which I'm sure will serve us very well whether it be during calamities like hopefully we don't get them, hurricanes and so on. So we are very thankful for all of the training which we have received over the years. So it is for me to say thanks and for for me to wish you well. And I'm sure our medical professionals are already looking forward to the partnership and the arrangements. The only problem for me as a politician, not as a minister, but as a politician is that, you know, every constituency wants you in the village, in the town, and you know, that's impossible. And so I'm hoping that our referral system, you know, will allow you to see St. Lucian's from all around the island. I'm being advised by our team that yes, we have referrals from all around St. Lucia. So I'm very pleased with this. I'm happy to know you, you will be going to Souffre. And I'm hoping you will get some time to visit the Salva Springs and on other sites in Souffre. So it's for me to say thanks. I will certainly make a statement in the parliament this morning as we have a sitting of the House of Assembly, the sitting of parliament in a few minutes. And I will certainly speak to the, not only to the parliament, but to the rest of St. Lucia about your visit. So thank you very much. I look forward to your visit and hopefully during your stay, I can pop in and out occasionally if Dr. James and Dr. Lisa Charles and the team allow me. So I'm just teasing. So thank you very much. I will follow from Dr. Belba and say bienvenue, bienvenue à cette lycée. Moica, sueto, a bon temps et plaisir. So thank you very much.