Wednesday, June 13, 2007 Camotes folk get health services
OVER 1,100 residents of Tudela in Camotes Island benefited from the latest combined medical-surgical-dental mission.
The health outreach program under the Camotes Medical Missions II is a continuing program under the Health Outreach Program Enhancement (Hope) Project, which started in Pilar, Camotes Island 16 years ago.
Phase I of the project involved 15 annual medical missions in Camotes Island, which were all conducted by the Rotary Club of Cebu Fuente of RI District 3860.
The missions were conducted to provide free medical care to the indigents of the island. The mission included medical consultations, surgical operations and dental procedures and medicines.
To date, the Hope project has already served over 18,000 indigents, mostly farmers and fishermen and their families living in Pilar, Tudela, Poro and San Francisco.
Over P2.5 million have already been spent for the medical missions.
This year, some 74 surgeons, physicians, dentists, nurses, interns and Rotarians composed the 16th Annual Camotes Medical Mission, which was recently held in the town of Tudela.
Takeshi Shimizu of Takaoka City, Japan, who is the acclaimed “Father of the Camotes Medical Mission Program,” funded the medical mission, with the Rotary Club of Metro Cebu (RCMC) as project country co-sponsor.
Volunteers
The second phase of the Hope Project was made possible by assembling some 68 volunteers from the Cebu Medical Society, Philippine College of Surgeons – Central Visayas Chapter, Cebu Dental Society.
To assist the surgical and dental teams were the 32 volunteers from Torch, an organization of graduating medical students from Cebu Velez College School of Medicine, two anaesthesiologist-volunteers from the Perpetual Succour Hospital and an ophthalmologist from the Central Visayas Society of Ophthalmology.
With Romy Ballesteros of the Rotary Club of Cebu Fuente (RCCF) as the overall mission coordinator, this year’s medical mission in Tudela was joined by RCMC, led by its president Gema Luisa A. Pido, who is this year’s country sponsor.
Friendship
The Camotes Medical Mission Phase II is covered by a three-year program entered by the Japan-Philippines Friendship Association of Toyama, as represented by its president, Shimizu, and the RCMC.
To recall, the mission began in 1992 when Shimizu, in cooperation with the late past president of the RCCF, Kenichi “Ken” Yonaha, and the then incumbent RCCF Pres. Julio “Jojo” Gonzalez, organized the first medical mission for the town of Pilar.
The project was funded by Shimizu, who is a Japanese war veteran who returned to Cebu some 50 years after he and his compatriots were repatriated to Japan after the war.
This year’s medical mission was led by Dr. Wyben Briones; Rotarian Romeo C. Ballesteros, the mission executive director in-charge of overall operations, and RCMC’s Pido as special projects coordinator.
The other members of the mission’s executive committee were Dr. Vic Balbuena as medical team leader and Dr. Milagro Ham as dental team leader.
The Cebu Provincial Government, the Department of Health and Glaxo-Smith Kline also contributed some medicines to the mission.
