The Chinese government on Thursday donated a sea ambulance to Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF).
The handover ceremony was held at the Coast Guard building Thursday afternoon.
Donation of the sea ambulance was part of the China free aid agreed upon between China and Maldives, during the official visit of China's President Xi Jinping to the island nation in 2014. The free aid agreement was signed between the two countries in 2015.
The donated sea ambulance is larger and features more medical facilities aboard, compared to Maldives' existing fleet of 25 sea ambulances.
Speaking at the ceremony, Chinese Ambassador to Maldives Zhang Lizhong declared that the sea ambulance was a symbol of the friendship between the two nations. He stated that the fully equipped sea ambulance would be an asset to the Maldivian health sector, and vowed that China would provide the required technical assistance.
State Minister of Defence and National Security, Mohamed Zuhair thanked the Chinese government for the donation. Noting that medics encountered drawbacks while transferring emergency patients from the atolls to Male which could take a significant amount of time, he stressed the importance of having a fully equipped sea ambulance in the fleet.
He further revealed that over 10,000 patients have been carried by sea ambulances ever since their operations began in the Maldives.
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