The US Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort will leave Baltimore this weekend for earthquake-stricken Haiti.

The vessel will be on an open-ended humanitarian mission, according to Navy Lt. Cmdr. Heidi Lenzini, reports Associated Press.

The Navy is staffing the ship with hundreds of doctors, nurses and technicians from the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland.

The vessel visited Haiti in April last year as part of a four-month mission to the Caribbean and Latin America.