US ship comforts Latam poor in contest with Cuba

ACAJUTLA, El Salvador, Aug 2 (Reuters) A huge US Navy hospital ship converted from an oil supertanker is a key weapon in the battle between the United States and Cuba to win over Latin American's poor by doling out free health care.

The 894-ft (270-metre), 10-floor USNS Comfort has given no-cost eye operations and other medical services to thousands of Salvadorans on a weeklong visit to the Pacific port of Acajutla as part of the effort to boost the popularity of the Bush administration in a region where it is often mistrusted.

The Comfort, painted white with red crosses to designate it as a hospital ship, is on a four-month mission that will take it to 12 nations in Central and South America and the Caribbean.

Communist Cuba has long earned friends throughout Latin America by exporting doctors and supplying free operations often funded in recent years by the oil wealth of its leftist ally Venezuela.

Now, the United States is hitting back in the battle for the affection of millions of Latin America's poor.

The White House hosted 150 Latin American and 90 US organizations at conference last month to boost US social work in Latin America.

For poor Salvadorans, foreign aid is a welcome change from the local health care.

''These kinds of services are not provided on a regular basis, only when foreign staff come,'' said Blanca Mendoza, 41, who was treated for gastritis on the Comfort.

CASTRO RIDICULE The floating hospital served in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and assisted Hurricane Katrina victims in September 2005. It began its current tour in mid-June and drew ridicule from Cuban leader Fidel Castro who said its mission was only fitful and could not compare to decades of work by Cuban doctors abroad.

''You can't carry out medical programs by episodes,'' Castro said in July, boasting that Cuba's medical aid programs were successful despite decades of US sanctions.

Cuba has 28,000 doctors and other medical staff giving patients free care in 68 countries and managed to send help to survivors of a 2005 earthquake in Pakistan's Himalayas.

Cuba's health system received plaudits in US documentary maker Michael Moore's current movie ''SiCKO,'' which is critical of the US pharmaceutical and medical insurance industries.

Honduras, a US ally during the Cold War, hosts 300 Cuban medical staff in city hospitals and rural locations.

''Honduras is opening its frontiers to Cuba, a country that is providing us with medical help,'' said President Manuel Zelaya, who has taken the poor Central American country closer to Cuba and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Cuban doctors have treated thousands of patients at the Omar Torrijos hospital in the Panamanian province of Veraguas since March.

The USNS Comfort, an oil supertanker until the Navy took it over in 1987, has 500 medical staff trained in everything from pulling teeth to removing tumors. They care for patients both on board and at local clinics.

The US military regularly treats civilians in Latin America and the Caribbean.

''This ship has allowed us this year, for the first time in a long time, to exceed our average patient care figure, which is about 250,000 people a year,'' said Jose Ruiz, a spokesman for the US Southern Command.

The Comfort leaves El Salvador for Peru this week and will later visit Ecuador, Colombia, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana and Suriname.

REUTERS SAM BST0448