U.S. military humanitarian exercise helps Belize District

While residents of Crooked Tree were wondering whether a U.S. researcher was killing their fish, another group of gringos was busy on a number of public service projects that will be remembered long after the fish problem is forgotten.

Kendra Griffith, Reporting
For the next two weeks, thirty-two medical professionals from the U.S. Air Force Reserve and three Army veterinarians will be visiting rural villages throughout the Belize District seeing residents for medical, dental, and optometric afflictions and providing veterinary care to animals.

Lt. Col. Rick Feldmeier, O.C. MEDRETE Belize
“We’re primarily doing acute care. We can initiate some therapy for some long term illness, but we are referring them to the Belizean health care system but we can treat problems that are existing now that you can cure right off the bat with some medication.”

On Monday and Tuesday the group was in Crooked Tree.

Dorian Dawson, Resident
“I came to the clinic today because yesterday I made an appointment with the dentist to clean some teeth and check on some of my tooth.”

Evelyn Crawford, Resident
“Well, I am right here to see about my eye.”

Kendra Griffith
“What you think wrong with your eye?”

Evelyn Crawford
“Well, sometimes I would get a blur.”

In the two days the medical team conducted over four hundred procedures, while the veterinarians dealt with over a hundred. But when the village is not being overrun by U.S. military personnel, residents look to one woman for their healthcare needs.

Antoinette Hope, Rural Health Nurse, Crooked Tree
“My name is Antoinette Hope; I am the rural health nurse out here and a registered midwife.”

“I don’t get doctors out here from the government. They don’t send doctors our here so when they come in people get a chance to come and make their complaints and get the treatment that I don’t have.”

Hope is the only medical professional servicing Crooked Tree’s eight hundred and seventy-five villagers.

Antoinette Hope
“Out here I offer child health and prenatal clinics, post natal clinics, doing immunizations and I do minor things like small cuts that don’t need the doctor. I do home visits, do blood pressure checks, check for blood sugar for diabetes people.”

Kendra Griffith
“So if people need more medical attention than you can offer, what do they need to do?”

Antoinette Hope
“I refer them to the doctor in the city or in Orange Walk if they need further treatment that I cannot give them.”

Kendra Griffith
“And that happens often?”

Antoinette Hope
“No, not very often. Sometimes they go on their own without stopping and checking with me.”

But it’s not only healthcare benefits that the residents are receiving. Since March, a ten-man crew of U.S. Navy personnel and B.D.F. Soldiers have been braving the heat to construct a two-classroom building for the government school.

Eric Montis, Crew Chief, Crooked Tree
“We are just about finished. We are doing finishing touches on the roof and then we have to install the doors, a little bit of electrical, then we are going to place the sidewalk in the front and put some grass down, put a flag pole out front and we’ll be done.”

The new structure will house preschoolers and infant one.

Kendra Griffith
“How many preschoolers do you have?”

Verna Jex, Principal, Crooked Tree Government School
“We have about twenty-three and we have a small wooden building that was a single family house for many, many, many years and that’s what they are occupying right now.”

“One of our primary concern is that the preschool doesn’t have enough space to make the corners that is required and so now in coming over here they will have enough space. They can make all the different corners. The children will have space to move around and so will the teacher.”

Before they leave the sailors and soldiers will also be doing some repairs to the school’s wooden building. Kendra Griffith Reporting for News Five.

The medical professionals are in Maskall through Thursday and will them move on to Burrell Boom, Hattieville, and Ladyville for two days in each village.