Negril benefits from health fair

Claudia Gardner, Assignment Coordinator

WESTERN BUREAU:

The New Jersey-based Caribbean Medical Mission staged the last of its four health fairs at the St Mary's Anglican Church in Negril last Saturday in collaboration with the Negril Environmental Education Trust.

According to treasurer and chairperson of the organisation's travel committee, Marrie-Rose Garbacz, more than 100 residents benefited from the Negril fair.

"The mission has been great. This is not our first visit, though, as we have been around since 1996. We have 33 volunteers on this mission, 10 of whom are physicians. In relation to the physicians, their credentials are sent to the Ministry of Health, so they all have permits and can write prescriptions that can be honoured locally, just in case we don't have something which is needed in our dispensary," Garbacz told Western Focus.

"We staged fairs at the Oaks Glades Health Centre in Kingston, the Ebony Vale Baptist Church in Spanish Town, and Three Hills in St Mary. The patients are excited to see us. They wish we could come more often. We wish we could come more often, but it's tough. We have one ophthalmologist and it's hard for him to come more than once per year, and everybody wants to see the eye doctor," she added.

However, according to Garbacz, the main complaint of most patients was high blood pressure.

"The sodium intake on the island is pretty high, so the main complaint has been hypertension," she said.

Services offered at the fair included blood sugar and pressure screenings, general check-ups, basic dental examinations, eye tests, and the prescription of eyeglasses. Over-the-counter drugs such as ibuprofen for general pain, drugs for hypertensive patients and diabetics, toothbrushes, and toothpaste were also distributed.