Mercy care extends all year round
While there’s no denying the importance of providing Christmas dinner for hundreds of senior citizens, that activity is a very small part of what the Mercy Care Centre does for needy Belizeans. News 5’s Marion Ali has the rest of the story.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Since 1957, the Mercy Care Centre has been providing free basic health care services to the elderly. Managing Director, Marva Nicholas, says the Centre helps over five hundred clients because otherwise they would have nowhere to turn.
Marva Nicholas, Managing Dir., Mercy Care Centre
“Although it is general primary medicine, what we would do is act as advocates for these individuals and refer them through the system in educating them about the system, try to connect them to the areas that will offer those services based on their economic situation, and at times even fund raise for particular needs where the situation is a matter of life and death.”
If the situation is not life-threatening, the centre has an outreach programme, consisting of a physician, two registered nurses, and a social worker, to treat patients who are confined by their illness. When modern medicine is not enough, Mercy Care follows through to the end.
Marva Nicholas
“Those patients are managed with a lot more detail. Their entire, psychological, spiritual, and individual concerns come into play, simply because if somebody is not prepared for the inevitable, there are issues that normally surface, such as if they own property, if they haven’t been connected to their relative, if they have been detached from the system, how do they get back into their church so they can get a proper funeral, all of those components are united at the point of knowledge that they are terminally ill.”
It’s that kind of holistic treatment that has made the Mercy Care Centre so popular.
Linsford Bryant
“They handle me here with love so I can’t complain about them. So everybody treat me very good. I love it here. No complain at all. If I complain about these people I’m telling lie.”
Marion Ali
“You go anywhere else for medical attention?”
Gloria McKoy
“No.”
Marion Ali
“Why?”
Gloria McKoy
“Here is good. Good treatment. When I get mi hand bruk Sister tend to me and no charge me nothing. They treat me good here.”
But while treatment of ailments is important, nutrition also plays a major role in health care. In 1987 the centre added a nutrition and social services component that serves around a hundred elderly people four days a week.
Alicia Martin, Kitchen Guest Man., Mercy Care Centre
“We provide a full breakfast and a lunch, we provide for the spiritual growth, we have a chapel where we take them everyday for prayers. Then we have the facilities of a bathroom, where we provide their toiletries clothes, shoes, that is being donated.”
Also donated is transport courtesy of Novelo’s Bus Line, and for those unable to leave home, the centre will deliver food. But helping to keep the elderly well-fed and clothed is more than a job for Alicia Martin, who drives everyday from her Orange Walk home.
Alicia Martin
“God has called me to do this ministry. And I find a joy doing this because they don’t have this facility anywhere that will provide all of this. And they are very much happy, very much united, and they meet friends and other people that sometimes they are related to. I find it good for them and it brings a fulfilment. To me it’s more than a job.”
Marion Ali for News 5.
The Mercy Care Centre conducts house visits and screening before it accepts anyone into its lifetime membership programme. It operates with a staff of fifteen, plus seventeen volunteers and receives assistance from the Sisters of Mercy Health Care System in Saint Louis, Missouri, as well as other local donors.
