[NYTr] US Takes a Page from Cuba's Book on Making Friends: Medical Aid
 
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:55:00 -0500 (CDT)


Via NY Transfer News Collective  *  All the News that Doesn't Fit
 
The Financial Times - July 9, 2007
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/29dfedc8-2df3-11dc-821c-0000779fd2ac.html

Washington provides comfort in fight to win Latin American hearts and
minds 

By Richard Lapper

It has been a busy day on the USNS Comfort, a 69,000-ton hospital ship
that sits alongside a pier in the Panamanian port of ColC3n, and is in
the fourth week of its four-month humanitarian mission to Latin America
and the Caribbean.

Military and volunteer doctors and dentists aboard the ship have
treated 35,000 Central Americans since the middle of June, in the
latest of a series of social and economic initiatives aimed at boosting
US standing in the region.

Battered by the unpopularity of the war in Iraq and a series of policy
blunders in the early part of the decade, the US launched the $20m
(B#9.9m, ?14.7m) mission last month, as part of what Hank Paulson, US
treasury secretary, describes as efforts at "spreading opportunity,
reducing poverty and building the middle class".

Mr Paulson, who today begins a week-long trip to Brazil, Uruguay and
Chile, also announced a $19m infrastructure fund last week and new
funds for promoting lending to small business a month ago. There are
similar relatively small-scale US initiatives to promote English
teaching and healthcare training in Central America.

On board the Comfort, a few dozen Panamanians are either preparing for
or recovering from treatment for hernias, cataracts and a host of
relatively delicate surgeries. Among them, happily playing with his
Pokemon cards in a corner of a quiet ward, is Jonathan Abre, a
four-year-old boy, who has had an operation on his tongue. "He couldn't
eat or talk properly before," says Ysidra, his mother, a schoolteacher.
"The treatment here was very quick and they treated us so well."

Nearby at the ColC3n basketball stadium teams of medics and dentists
work overtime offering eye tests and basic dental care.

Captain Robert Kapcio, the mission commander and a 46-year-old veteran
of operations supporting US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, says the
Comfort mission has been well received. In Guatemala, "people started
to cheer when the doctors arrived. We know we will have a strong
short-term impact. The needs are huge."

Critics say the failure of the US to give greater attention to these
"needs" in the past has undermined US standing. Two of the
administration's bitterest enemies - Venezuela's President Hugo ChC!vez
and Cuba's Fidel Castro - have gained in popularity partly as a result
of Venezuelan-financed primary healthcare programmes run by Cuban
doctors in Venezuela, Bolivia and some other countries.

In response to this kind of competition, US officials have also been
seeking to build better relationships with countries such as Chile,
Brazil, Peru and Mexico, relatively friendly to the US.

In March, President George W. Bush made the longest visit of his
presidency to Latin America, forging a potentially important agreement
with Brazil to promote the use of ethanol and other green fuels. Mr
Bush is following this up today by hosting a conference with Latin
American businessmen and non-governmental organisations.

Some US analysts have been heartened by signs that Mr ChC!vez's
influence may be waning. Venezuelan membership of Mercosur, the South
American customs union linking Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay,
is at risk because Brazil's Congress, which criticised Mr ChC!vez for
clamping down on media critics two months ago, has yet to approve its
bid to join. Mr ChC!vez last week threatened to withdraw his country's
membership bid.

There is, however, also a counter-trend. The collapse at the end of
June of Mr Bush's immigration bill could damage relations with Mexico
and some other governments. Relations with Colombia, the US's most
fervent ally and recipient of more than $4.5bn in counter-drugs aid
since 2000, are at a low ebb.

Writing in Newsweek Jorge CasteC1ada, a Mexican academic, described the
last week of June as "the worst ever for Bush administration's Latin
American policy". Michael Shifter of the Washington-based
Inter-American Dialogue says "recent steps, though positive, are too
minor and peripheral" to ease the strains in the US relations with the
region.

On board the Comfort, meanwhile, many volunteers worry that the mission
is too much like a Band-aid. "We have not been in one place long enough
and our paediatrician has had to turn down cases," says Dr Nick Morris,
a Project Hope volunteer from Wyoming.

After watching a US coastguard turn away would-be patients at the
basketball stadium, Bob Leitch, a former British army colonel, also
working on the mission, warns about the danger of "raising expectations
and making people frustrated. For this to be worthwhile you have to
build capacity."
       
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