Rural Residents to Benefit From Visiting Medical Mission

Residents in several rural communities across Jamaica will benefit from the services of a visiting medical mission from the Northeast USA, from January 18-27. The highly specialized medical practitioners, numbering some 45, include Board Certified Dentists, Ophthalmologists, Paediatricians and Internists. They will visit six parishes.
Co-ordinated by the Organization for International Development (OID), the mission is the first of two to Jamaica for 2008.
The mission opens on Saturday, January 19, with an all day health and wellness fair at the York Street Primary School, St. Catherine. The fair is a major collaboration of the New York based York Street Primary Past Students’ Association and will offer advice on health education, examinations, and screening on a number of health and lifestyle issues.
Members of the team will be in Crofts Hill, Clarendon on January 21; Moravia, Clarendon and the 3D Clinic in St. Catherine on January 22; and New Forrest Secondary School, Manchester on January 23.
On January 24, the team will be in Springfield, St. James and in Hanover on January 25. Members will leave the island on January 27.
The mission was started by Jamaican, Dr. Roy W. Streete in New York in 1991. He told JIS News that the organization “is concerned not only with the healthcare and economic needs of the poor, but with their training, educational and employment needs, so that they may be better able to provide for themselves and their families.”
Supported by generous contributions from the private and public sectors, including the donation of a mobile clinic by the HoSang Family Foundation, the medical mission has toured the Caribbean and Africa, “to better understand, remember and appreciate our roots, be aware of who we are, reach back and show someone we care by lending a helping hand,” noted Dr. Streete, who is also Chairman of the Health Sector Committee of the Jamaica Diaspora Advisory Board/Northeast USA.