The best medical mission yet! VFV’s 18th Annual Medical Mission on the 20th of April at Julita, Leyte was a success. Months of preparation, coordination and hard work from the VFV team enabled us to provide vital services to patients and constituents from our beneficiary municipality.
The goal of the project is to provide free minor surgery to young boys and dental services to children and adults, who’d otherwise spend hard-earned money for these medical services. Circumcision is engrained in the Filipino culture. A young boy’s passage to teenage life is not complete without being circumcised. Dental services is hard to come by not only due to lack of funds but also to limited public health dentists. One dentist maybe assigned to several municipalities and as such has only limited time at each one, not enough to cater to the needs of patients.
We owe big thanks the medical team from the different Municipal Health Units, Philippine Army 78 Infantry Batallion, Philippine National Police-Regional Health Services 8, dentists, dental aides, nurses, foreign and local volunteers, and sponsored kids and scholars. Without them, we could not have done any of this. We also would like to thank Tingog Sinirangan for donating medicines. Coordinating the project became much easier with the support and cooperation from the local government and rural health unit of our beneficiary municipality, Julita. The municipal mayor and health officer were easy to work with and would immediately come to our aid whenever we needed it.
Patients for circumcision and dental services were pre-registered. Yet still more unregistered patients came to the medical mission hoping to get the chance to avail of free services. Some children either got scared of the instruments or the cries of other children, and ran away from the doctor. Some adult patients had high blood pressure so they could not have their bad tooth pulled out. At the end of the day, a total of 175 children got circumcised and 151 children and adults received dental services. Trained barbers of 78IB gave free haircut to 60 boys and men.
Seeing how grateful the patients are for receiving free medical services is worth all the time, effort, and resources spent in organizing this project. Their sense of gratitude inspires us all to continue our commitment to serve and make a difference. We may not be able to help everyone, but we will try to help those we can.
Thank you once again to each and everyone who made VFV’s 18th Medical Mission a success! God bless us all!