Ross, Rotary Club partner to offer health care in the community

Shoppers at Sheraton Mall on Monday took advantage of a free community clinic, organised by the Rotary Club of Barbados in collaboration with Ross University and Spelman College.

They received a range of health checks including blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, height, weight, blood sugar, cholesterol and oxygen level.

Past president of the club Elvin Sealy said the community clinic was part of a project developed to help Barbadians be more health conscious.

“The Rotary Club of Barbados launched its non-communicable disease (NCD) project as a response to a number of people in Barbados who never get an opportunity to find out that they have [an NCD] or may not want to know they have one. In partnership with Ross University, we launched this programme last year in October in which we go to various venues across the island and set up. In the course of taking these tests, the nurses will advise the persons if there is a need for them to seek medical advice,” he said, adding that this was the tenth such community clinic.

In the past weeks, clinics were held at popular shopping spots across the island including, A1 Supermarkets-Carlton in Black Rock, St Michael and Emerald City, St Philip, King George V Park in St Philip, and Speightstown, St Peter. The clinics are held once a week and next week student doctors will return to Speightstown to conduct more free health services.

Dr. Rhonda McIntyre, the Senior Associate Dean of External Affairs at Ross University, said this initiative was also part of the university’s community clinical experience, a programme that provides quality healthcare services in local communities, giving medical students hands-on exposure.

Students from Spelman College, a historically black liberal arts college for women located in Atlanta, Georgia, participated in Monday’s clinic as part of their one-week Global Health elective programme.

McIntyre said that through the clinic, the students from both tertiary institutions operated in a real-world setting where they communicated with people from diverse cultural backgrounds and learned basic health screening skills. She said the information collected was shared with the Ministry of Health.

(SZB)