Operation Pacific Angel-Nepal officially concluded with a closing ceremony held at the Shree Chaturmukhi Higher Secondary School in Shaktikor, Nepal, Sept. 15.

The event celebrated the six-day operation that ran Sept. 8-13. Approximately 65 Combined U.S. military Australian, Bangladeshi, Mongolian and Great Britain military members worked side-by-side with Nepalese counterparts to complete a humanitarian assistance, disaster relief and engineering mission.

"Operation PACANGEL is important not only in Nepal but the other countries that we operate in as well as a partnership-building capacity," said U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Marc Martinez, PACANGEL-Nepal mission commander. "It allowed us to come in, work with the host nation, their government and their military to better prepare us and the host nation should we have to respond to a catastrophic event or natural disaster."

A critical part of PACANGEL-Nepal was the health services outreach portion where local and military medical professionals provided free care to 5,546 patients at two different sites - one in Shaktikhor and the other in Manahari. Focus areas for the care spanned general medicine, optometry, pediatric, physical therapy and dental specialties.

"It was an eye-opening experience getting to see the difference in dental issues here versus at home," said U.S. Air Force Tech. Sgt. Mia Tandoc, PACANGEL-Nepal registered dental hygienist. "Seeing the children light up when we gave them a toothbrush and toothpaste and then later seeing them brush their teeth at a fountain before leaving the site really gave us a sense of accomplishment and really made us feel like we helped them."

Engineering civic action projects were also a vital part of the operation. The engineers visited three schools in Shaktikhor and Manahari and addressed concerns of their headmasters in order to make a safer learning environment for the children. U.S. military members and Nepalese Army Soldiers partnered up and tackled various issues for the structures including plumbing, construction, lighting and patching leaky roofs.

"I hope both the Nepal and U.S. side learned different ways of engineering, that we learned different techniques, different ways of doing it because there's not just one way to accomplish engineering projects," said U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Chad Louis PACANGEL-Nepal lead engineer planner. "Sharing our techniques with the Nepalese Army was a great learning experience and we worked very well together to accomplish a lot in less than a week."

In addition to the medical and engineering portions of PACANGEL-Nepal, other events included a mental health subject-matter expert exchange at a local hospital, public health outreaches and education and a blast trauma injury exercise at the hospital in the country's capital of Kathmandu.

"We received positive feedback from both government officials and the Nepal army leadership and most importantly the civilian populace," Martinez said. "I can't put into words the amount of dedication that the entire team, both on the U.S. side and Nepal side, put forth to make this event a success."