* Cuban hospital director gets 15 years in deaths
* Cold snap left 26 psychiatric patients in morgue
By Esteban Israel
HAVANA, Jan 31 (Reuters) - The director of a Cuban hospital where 26 mentally ill patients died during a cold spell last year was sentenced to 15 years in prison and others involved in the incident received lesser terms behind bars, official media said on Monday.
The deaths of the patients, who were reported to be mostly elderly and suffering from anemia and malnutrition, in January 2010 scandalized a public already angry over what it perceived as a deterioration in the country&${esc.hash}39;s much vaunted public health system.
The Havana Psychiatric Hospital failed to provide warm clothes, cover open windows or adequately staff wards during a cold snap despite having resources to do so, communist party newspaper Granma said when the trial began two weeks ago, .
Prosecutors sought a 14-year sentence for the director, accused of diversion of resources and abandonment of minors, the sick and disabled, but the court tacked on an additional year for aggravating circumstances.
According to a communique published on the Granma web site (www.granma.cubasi.cu), and read on state-run television, 12 other people, from the deputy director of the hospital to a cook, were also condemned to prison terms for their culpability in the deaths.
"The court considered the charges presented by prosecutors to be true ... and therefor imposed prison terms of between five and 15 years," the communique stated.
COLD WEATHER
The deaths, reported to have occurred during a week in January when temperatures dropped to 38 degrees Fahrenheit (3.6 Celsius) on the usually balmy Caribbean island, were first brought to light by a human rights group and later confirmed by the government.
Granma said some of the dead showed signs of malnutrition and anemia despite ample food rations provided the hospital.
The communist government founded by Fidel Castro after a 1959 revolution established a system of universal free health care, with a very high ratio of doctors to patients. This has achieved health indicators to rival the wealthy West.
But an economic crisis that forced Cuba to stop paying some foreign debts and restructure other loans has exacerbated shortages of medical supplies in the Cuban health system.
Cuba&${esc.hash}39;s government, now headed by Fidel&${esc.hash}39;s brother, Raul Castro, points to a decades-long U.S. trade embargo as a major factor in the country&${esc.hash}39;s economic problems.
The illegal but tolerated Cuban Human Rights Commission, which first brought the deaths to light, condemned the trial as a farce.
"They broke the chain of responsibility at its weakest link," Elizardo Sanches, leader of the commission, said.
"The government has eluded its political and administrative responsibility for this lamentable incident," he said.
Former Health Minister Jose Ramon Balaguer, who fought alongside the Castro brothers to overthrow dictator Fulgencio Batista in 1959, left the cabinet post six months after the incident but remains a senior Communist Party member.
(Additional reporting by Nelson Acosta; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)
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