Cuban envoy visits USN hospital ship

Cuba's ambassador to Haiti, Ricardo Garcia Napoles and five Cuban doctors, made a courtesy call on the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort anchored off Port-au-Prince, Haiti. USNS Comfort, on its fourth humanitarian mission to Haiti, and on its final legs of a six-month deployment across the Caribbean and Central and South America, will be seeing Haitian patients and performing surgeries through Sept. 18. It was an “historic visit in the context of the renewal of diplomatic relations between Cuba and the United States" after about 50 years, he said. Currently, there are 700 Cuban doctors working in Haiti. Some 800 Haitian doctors have completed medical training in Cuba. (Agence France Presse 09/12/15) Gulf Coast Maritime Note: There are 19 Naval Hospital Pensacola, Fla., personnel currently serving aboard Comfort. In 2010, Comfort provided two months of vital assistance to Haiti following a deadly earthquake that killed more than 250,000 people and crippled the country's infrastructure. That visit including some 35 personnel assigned from Naval Hospital Pensacola.