U.S. Army brings free medical care
If you live in the Belize District and need a new pair of glasses, some dental work, or a check-up, then some free medical attention is headed your way. That’s right, FREE! The clinics come courtesy of the U.S. Army. Patrick Jones was in Crooked Tree today where the residents turned out to take advantage of the services being offered.
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The team of medical personnel from the United States Southern Command will spend the next ten days in villages in the Belize River Valley. Team leader is Major Janice Lombardi.
Maj. Janice Lombardi, Commander, MEDRETE
“It’s mostly general health care. We also have dentistry, optometry and pharmacy. And just doing also preventive medicine, education, hygiene, and dental health and basic hand washing and things like that.”
Lombardi says the fully equipped team of thirty-five medical personnel, is prepared to treat anything from minor aches and pains to tooth extraction.
Maj. Janice Lombardi
“We have five medical teams composing of either a doctor or a nurse practitioner at that same level, a nurse R.N. and a medic, and we have two dentists and two dental technicians. We have one optometrist and a technician, and we have a pharmacist on staff.”
“The overall objective, the training for us and it’s a humanitarian type of mission where we’re just providing as much care to those people and establishing a good relationship with the country of Belize.”
An advanced team made an assessment of the needs of the people of rural Belize last October, and Lombardi says they expect to see anywhere from three hundred to three hundred and fifty people per day for the duration of the mission.
And on the first day, queues of people, mainly children and the elderly, kept them busy. Four stations are set up on the grounds of the Crooked Tree Government School. Here is the optometrist and admissions area. Referrals for treatment and examination come here. Those requiring dental work, like eight-year old Calvin, spend a couple minutes in the chair in another classroom. And the final stop is at the pharmacy where prescriptions are filled. But apart from treating ailments, the team is also educating people to prevent them from getting sick in the first place, especially with gastroenteritis a threat from neighbouring Guatemala.
Maj. Janice Lombardi
“It can be a concern anywhere because if you get bacteria in your system from contaminated water or food, anybody can get gastroenteritis.”
Patrick Jones
“Are you telling the people about that?”
Maj. Janice Lombardi
“Yes, we’re talking a lot about food hygiene, and washing hands and things like that. Because if they could boil their water when they cook and things like that before they cook the food, and to make sure they separate where they go to the bathroom and where they wash their food and stuff like that, that’s really critical, and washing their hands.”
Last year there were three similar medical readiness and training exercises conducted in the Toledo and Stann Creek districts. And if day one of this year’s first exercise is any indication of what to expect, residents of the Belize River Valley will take full advantage of the services.
Patrick Jones
“Scenes like these are expected to be repeated many times over as the first MEDRETE team to visit Belize in 2004 makes its way to Maskall, Burrell Boom, and Bermudian Landing. Patrick Jones for News 5.”
The MEDRETE team will be in Maskall Village on the eighteenth and nineteenth. In Burrell Boom the free clinics will be conducted on the twentieth, twenty-first, and twenty-second, and in Bermudian Landing on the twenty-third, twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth of this month. The mission is being carried out in collaboration with the Ministry of Health and the Belize Defence Force.
