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Doctor, med students bring health care to farmworkers
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET, Times Staff Writer
DADE CITY -- One man died a few months ago in the fields, collapsing among the crops he spent a short lifetime harvesting. Another farmworker came home one night a few years ago and suddenly buckled. He died before his family could help him to the car. The memory of both men stays with Margarita Romo, founder of Farmworkers Self Help. They didn't have health insurance. They didn't have money for a doctor. They didn't know they were sick, and they didn't know that a better diet or a tiny pill for high blood pressure might have saved their lives. "I believe with all my heart, they could have lived if someone knew they were sick," she said. For years, Farmworkers Self Help has offered a free health clinic, usually for a half-day on Saturdays, for poor people with no alternatives. This weekend the clinic will get a shot in the arm, so to speak, from a visiting doctor and a group of Florida State University students. The group will provide free checkups and medications for people who have no health insurance. The checkups will run from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at the Farmworkers Self Help clinic at 15211 Polk Ave., between Lock Street and Tait Avenue. The clinic's name: La Casa de Esperanza y Salud. The House of Hope and Health. "We're not looking for people who are just looking for an easy break," Romo said. "We're trying to find people who have no insurance and no money and no possibility of getting help from anywhere else." FSU senior Mehran M. Heravi created the Community Medical Outreach program last year to provide free medical care in impoverished communities. Dr. Scottie Whiddon, a physician on staff at Tallahassee Memorial Hospital, will provide the checkups and any necessary medications. Heravi and six other aspiring medical students from FSU will watch and learn. "It's a very intensive experience," said Heravi, who went on a similar outreach visit to Haiti in 2001. "We get to get in there and see the patients and see what the procedure is. The interaction is in a much more comfortable setting, and it becomes emotional to know that we provided this health care." The students play a key role. They collected about $1,300 in equipment and medical supplies for this visit, Heravi said. They also pressed pharmaceutical companies to donate antibiotics, pain relievers such as ibuprofen, and medications for high blood pressure and diabetes. The group visited the Farmworkers Self Help clinic earlier this year and treated 178 patients in one weekend. Many had hypertension or diabetes and didn't know it, Heravi said. Some were reluctant to receive a checkup, he added, even if it was free. "There were four or five workers to a room, afraid to leave their house," Heravi said. "They didn't even want to come out of their room to get their glucose or blood pressure checked. "Easily, 80 percent of these people would not get medical care if not for this clinic," he said. Romo has been spreading word of this weekend's clinic by visiting the farmworker camps and circulating fliers. The help will be here. She just hopes people will take it. "If we're going to help our community get healthier, we need to help ourselves," Romo said.
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