Name 866 Launched 2007 Status in active service | Ordered 1 Commissioned December 22, 2008 | |
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Builder CSIC (Guangzhou Shipyard International Company Limited) | ||
The Type 920 Hospital Ship is a class of hospital ship in the People's Liberation Army Navy of the Peoples' Republic of China.
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920 is the type of the ship. 866 is the PLA Navy pennant number of this ship, 岱山岛号 (Dai san dao hao) is the navy name, 和平方舟 (Peace Ark) is the name in peacetime.
History
Launched in 2007, China is one of a few nations with naval floating hospitals. The Chinese rationale for the ship was to give China a platform to provide a better means to providing quicker humanitarian response to disasters around the world, but others contend it also allows China to extend the navy's blue water capabilities. The single ship of the class has a pennant number 866. The ship is assigned to the East Sea Fleet and based out of Hubei. The ship has 500 beds, 35 ICUs, 12 operating theatres, and the capacity to accommodate 60 major surgeries a day – about as many as a large hospital in Beijing. The ship is unarmed and painted white with red crosses to conform to the Geneva Convention criteria for a civilian hospital ship; firing upon it is potentially a war crime under international law.
Operations
On September 1, 2010, the hospital ship embarked on a three-month "Harmonious Mission 2010" to the Gulf of Aden with a total of 428 officers including 100 medical workers. En route it visited and provided medical treatment to the local people of Djibouti, Tanzania, Kenya, the Seychelles and Bangladesh.
During "Harmonious Mission 2011", Peace Ark visited Cuba, Costa Rica, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago, the first Chinese voyage to the Caribbean.
In November 2013, the ship was deployed to Tacloban, Philippines to assist in the recovery from Typhoon Haiyan.
Peace Ark also participated as part of the Chinese contribution to Exercise RIMPAC 2014 in addition to the United States hospital ship USNS Mercy.