Dr. Baugh Provides Free Health Checks for Back-to-School

Just under a thousand school children in St. Catherine have benefitted from free health checks for back-to -school, provided by a medical team headed by Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Trade, Hon. Dr. Kenneth Baugh.
A medical doctor and consultant surgeon by profession, Dr. Baugh is also Member of Parliament for West Central St. Catherine.
Schools require that students submit a medical certificate at the start of the school year and Dr. Baugh, who has been providing the free service in the parish for the past 10 years, said that hundreds of students benefitted annually.
“We spend about two or three weeks going from district to district, setting up teams to undertake medical examinations to assist them,” he told JIS News.
He informed that 10 clinics were conducted over the last few weeks, with close to 1,000 medical certificates prepared.
Dr. Baugh said that the free service is well appreciated by the parents as well as school administrators. “Parents appreciate it very much because it helps to save a lot of the money they would have to find to have it (medical checks) done privately,” he pointed out.
Director of the Ministry of Education’s Region Six, covering St. Catherine and Clarendon, Mary Nichol, told JIS News that the Ministry welcomes the move and is encouraging other private medical professionals to provide similar service in communities.
“I would encourage it as it can do nothing but help us,” she said, adding that other areas to be addressed include the psychosocial development and mental health of children.