Trump’s announcement last Sunday, dispatching one of two American military hospital ships to provide medical assistance to residents of Greenland, an autonomous region within the Danish Realm, came as a bolt from the blue for Denmark, the EU, and NATO.
After the US President’s recent speech in Davos and the conciliatory statements he made there, it might have seemed as if the storm that had caught the European Union and NATO by surprise had subsided, moving into a negotiating phase where Europe and Denmark could calmly and businesslike discuss the Greenland issue in search of a mutually acceptable solution. Not so!
The United States, preparing for a major military conflict with Iran, pressuring Cuba and Canada, and threatening the world with new universal trade tariffs, has found enough energy to unsettle its NATO allies, none of whom supported the idea of handing over the Danish icy island to the United States.
The North Observer, having read virtually all publications in the Greenlandic and Danish press as of 2<00> PM GMT on February 22, attempted to unravel the mystery behind the plan to send an American floating military hospital to Greenland.
The Danish press’s reaction to Trump’s latest escapade resembles the behavior of a well-fed dog napping in the sun, only to be suddenly kicked in the stomach by a hobnailed military boot. Angry denial and mocking comments filled the pages of Danish media (see below): “First, cure your poor and sick in America,” and then there’ll be something to talk about. “After all, the people of Greenland receive free medical care, something never seen in the US!”
Only one Danish-language Greenlandic publication acknowledged that the Americans had hit a sore spot in Greenland. The quality and standard of medical care on the island is significantly inferior to that of Denmark. There is a severe shortage of medical personnel, and staff turnover is unimaginable. This was also stated in a review cited below prepared by Danish doctors in 2024, who were forced to purchase modern equipment out of their own pocket.
The Legacy of Predatory Colonialism
Due to the metropolis’s long-standing and predatory policies, the basic social indicators of Greenlandic society do not meet the minimum requirements not only of the Nordic countries, but of the West as a whole.
In terms of life expectancy, Greenland ranks 169th out of 234 countries and territories included in the Worldometer for 2026, with a score of 70.44 years (Denmark 40th–82.39), lower than El Salvador, Iraq, and Western Sahara, the latter of which does not have any state healthcare system as such.
High rates of suicide, alcoholism, sexually transmitted and psychiatric diseases, domestic, community, and sexual violence, and a general disorientation and demotivation among dominating Inuit population have recently been compounded by the active introduction of LGBT patterns and gendering, which have added further confusion to society and led to a further decline in the birth rate, already below replacement.
The island’s population is highly likely to decline by 20% by 2050, to 46,000. It’s not hard to calculate when the last Inuit of Greenland will depart for a better world. This is the result of Denmark’s inhumane colonial rule of the island.
It follows from the above that Trump’s idea of free qualified medical care for the population, which US military medics will be able to provide, including complex surgical operations, will be appropriate for patients waiting for their turn in long queues, from two months to almost infinity. And without doubt, the qualification of American military medics will be higher than that of Danish doctors who come for a short time to do shift work, sometimes for a few days and weeks, from the metropolis.
The US Navy’s floating hospital can simultaneously perform 12 surgical procedures and accommodate 1,000 patients, roughly equal to all hospital beds in Greenland, the largest of which is the national hospital, Queen Ingrid’s Hospital, in Nuuk, with but 156 beds.
Danish politicians baselessly claim that Greenlanders don’t need American medical care. They absolutely do! This is evidenced by months-long waiting lists for complex treatments, demonstrating the inability and unwillingness of the parent country to provide quality medical care, even with the quota-based treatment of Greenlanders in Denmark.
Whatever the political calculations, perhaps dubious ones, behind Trump’s initiative, there’s no doubt that American medical aid to Greenlanders in need is a good cause, which could eventually acquire a political dimension. That’s why Denmark is behaving like a wife spurned by her husband, refusing to listen to reason and to acknowledge her imperfections, repeating a mantra of self-aggrandizement. Proclaimers of this mantra, why do residents of stateless Western Sahara live longer than Greenlanders under Denmark’s rule?
We Will Send a Great Hospital Ship to Greenland
“Working with the fantastic Governor of Louisiana, Jeff Landry, we are going to send a great hospital boat to Greenland to take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
“It’s on the way!!!” he added.
The hospital ship is traveling to Greenland in collaboration with Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry, whom the president appointed as special envoy for Greenland in December.
Landry confirms in a comment on the social media X that he is involved in the task.
“Thank you very much, President Donald Trump. Proud to work with you on this important task,” writes Landry.
The president does not elaborate on which sick people are in question. He does not share any other information either.
Something Is Rotten in the State of Denmark’s Former Colony
The Greenlandic health service is under pressure on almost all fronts: staff recruitment, finances, professional development, resource utilization, upgrading of the building stock, replacement of equipment, etc. And this pressure will increase as a result of, among other things, an aging population.
The Danish Problems Pale in Comparison
There are at least three basic conditions for running the Greenlandic health service, which serves approx. 56,000 people.
Firstly, Greenland has a geography with very large distances and scattered settlements with many small places. There are 2,700 km from north to south and 1,500 km from east to west. No wonder that 10% of the health budget goes to transporting patients and staff. Nuuk is home to 20,000 people, and the city is home to the national hospital, Queen Ingrid’s Hospital.
Multilingualism is another condition. The internal language of communication in the health service is often Danish due to the necessary recruitment of specialized Danish staff, while a large part of the Greenlandic population primarily speaks Greenlandic, which is the official language.
The Third Condition Is a Permanent Staff Shortage with a Constant Need to Recruit Qualified Workers from Outside
This has been the health service’s biggest challenge for years. There are currently approximately 1,600 employees in the health service, of which approximately 950 are permanent employees. There are a great many short-term employees—from a few weeks to a few months.
This results in approximately 1,500 new jobs annually! The majority come from Denmark.
It is important to try to retain Greenlandic-educated personnel, but for example, approximately half of Greenlandic-educated nurses are not in the healthcare system today.
Efforts are being made to get Greenlanders educated in Denmark to return to Greenland—too few do.
Greenland itself trains specialists in general medicine, and many other specialists come on short-term visits. For example, one of us is a specialist in heart disease and has just spent 10 days in Sisimiut, the country’s second largest city.
The aim was to see the city and its three surrounding settlements’ approximately 70 patients with known or suspected heart disease and examine them with the special equipment provided. Virtually all consultations are conducted with a Greenlandic interpreter. Acute cases are also treated by the hospital’s own doctors—often after telephone consultation with cardiologists in Nuuk or in Denmark. A similar arrangement with traveling specialists and telemedicine applies to other medical specialties.
and new and updated medical equipment is also in short supply.
Another of us has contributed to the application work for a donation for a new MRI scanner, which will be inaugurated here at the end of October. The current MRI is more than 10 years old and outdated. With the new scanner, it will be possible to deliver high-quality diagnostics, which is taking place in close collaboration between Queen Ingrid’s Hospital and Rigshospitalet.
Greenland took over responsibility for healthcare in 1992 and still has close cooperation with Denmark.
The Greenlandic healthcare system will also be closely linked to the Danish healthcare system in the near future, as a number of specialized treatments cannot be performed in Greenland.
The Danish government has just announced that in the 2025 Finance Act, it would allocate 140 million DKK to a separate pool for Greenland’s healthcare system.
The psychiatric area in the Greenlandic health service has experienced major capacity and staffing challenges for a number of years, which has led to long waiting times for assessment and treatment.
The staffing challenges can be illustrated by the fact that it has not been possible to recruit specialists in psychiatry for periods. Psychiatry has therefore had to focus on the most demanding psychiatric patients, while patients with more moderate symptoms have had to wait a long time for specialized assessment and treatment.
Trump’s Pressure Has Already Improved Healthcare in Greenland
Several Trump supporters have previously criticized Denmark for poor health conditions in Greenland. The health sector was taken over in 1992 and is the responsibility of Greenland. This year, however, an agreement has been made where Denmark will pay around 200 million kroner per year for the treatment of Greenlandic patients in Denmark.
If Donald Trump and his supporters want to focus on a sore point, then they can be said to have hit the right spot, as the quality and level of service in the healthcare system regularly causes great debate.
The healthcare system is, among other things, pressured by high costs for temporary workers. The Greenlandic Health Council concluded in its first report, published in the fall of 2025, that the healthcare system suffers from “chronic staff shortages and far too many temporary workers.”
Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed for the US to take over Greenland, but has been rejected by both Denmark and Greenland. The president believes that Greenland is important for national security reasons.
Trump’s special envoy to Greenland, Jeff Landry, has previously aired plans to visit Greenland in March. This happened in an interview with the media Fox News in mid-January.
Hospital Ship Post Shows That the Greenland Crisis Is Not Over
Greenland is still buzzing in the back of the mind of US President Donald Trump. It is clear after he wrote last night that he will send a hospital ship to Greenland.
“This is not something that will just go away. Although we may feel that everything is on a slightly calmer track now, it could escalate again, so the crisis is not necessarily over,” says Jakob Krogh, DR’s US correspondent.
But much remains uncertain.
“We do not know why Donald Trump is posting this post right now. We do not know what he means by it. We do not know if there is actually a hospital ship on its way to Greenland,” says Jakob Krogh.
Minister of Defense Troels Lund Poulsen says that Denmark is not aware of any information that a hospital ship is on its way to Greenland.
“There is no need for a special health effort in Greenland. The Greenlandic government is already taking care of that today, and the Commonwealth if there is a need for it,” says the minister.
He also emphasizes that the Greenlandic population is receiving the health care they need.
“If special treatment is needed, they will receive it in Denmark,” he says.
A Hospital Ship Is Lying Idle in a Shipyard
The US military fleet has two hospital ships. They are the USNS Mercy and the USNS Comfort. According to Marine Traffic, the USNS Mercy is now lying at a shipyard in the American city of Mobile. According to Vesselfinder, USNS Comfort was also stationed in Mobile 17 days ago.
On January 23, Alabama Shipyard in Mobile, Alabama, shared a photo of the two ships lying next to each other, where they were to be renovated.
Why Not Help Sick and Poor Americans?
Either this is a deliberate provocation in the midst of the negotiations on Greenland—and part of an attempt at an influence campaign against the Greenlanders, or it is an expression of a fundamental lack of knowledge about the Kingdom, where everyone—including Greenlanders—has the right to free treatment in the health service.
Something That the Americans Do Not Have
So one could rightly ask Trump why he does not use the hospital ship for the thousands of sick and poor Americans who cannot afford proper treatment, instead of sending the ship to a country that has not asked for it.
Denmark’s Arctic Command Has Just Saved an American Crew Member
The message from Trump comes after a crew member from an American submarine was evacuated by the Arctic Command in Greenland on Saturday afternoon. The Arctic Command confirmed this to TV 2.
According to KNR, the crew member needed emergency medical treatment.
A helicopter from the Danish inspection ship evacuated the crew member and flew him for treatment to the hospital in Nuuk.
The evacuation took place within Greenlandic territorial waters 7 nautical miles off Nuuk. It was carried out with the Danish Defence Seahawk helicopter. The helicopter was deployed from the inspection ship Vædderen.
The person was in urgent need of medical attention, and the evacuation took place to the Greenlandic health service. And paradoxically, it is also that Trump & Co. find it relevant to spend energy on a hospital ship to Greenland, all the while a possible American attack on Iran is lurking, and Trump should have enough to do with the big customs circus.
Specifications of the Hospital Ship USNS Mercy
The US Navy writes that the ship offers ‘floating, mobile, acute surgical treatment facilities’. It can be used by the US military and for ‘disaster relief and humanitarian operations worldwide’. The ship has 1,000 beds. There are 80 intensive care beds. It has 11 operating rooms. It has accommodation for a crew of approximately 1,300 people. It can produce 7,000 meals a day and around 757,000 liters of water.
The US Navy has two large hospital ships, USNS Mercy and USNS Comfort, based in San Diego and Norfolk respectively. They each have a capacity of 1,000 hospital beds and are equipped with 12 operating rooms each.
They are on a 5-day standby, meaning they are ready to depart with 5 days’ notice.
Source:
- Nyheder (in Danish)
- Dr (in Danish)
- Nyheder (in Danish)
- Bt (in Danish)
- Sermitsiaq (in Danish)
- Ekstrabladet (in Danish)
- Maritime Danmark (in Danish)
- KNR (in Danish)
- Jyllands-Posten (in Danish)
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