LINGAYEN, Pangasinan — Some 31,000 persons were given medical services and another 21,000, dental services by the Pangasinan “Kalusugan” caravan, a mobile team of health workers that visited different barangays or villages of the province this year.
Dr. Anna Ma. Teresa de Guzman, provincial health officer, said the caravan, spearheaded by Mrs. Carina Espino, wife of Governor Amado Espino III, brought medical and dental services to the communities, especially the poor ones.
The caravan was joined by doctors, nurses and other health professionals from the PHO as well as from the 14 public hospitals operated by the provincial government.
Gov. Espino, who launched the project when he assumed office in July 2016, directed the caravan to prioritize remote, far-flung and depressed barangays whose residents have no easy access to medical and dental care.
People suffering tuberculosis were given medicines while pregnant women were directed to give birth in hospitals where they and their infants would be given proper medical care.
Those diagnosed needing surgical operations or confinement were fetched from their respective homes by ambulances and brought to hospitals of the province.
De Guzman said aside from giving medical and dental services as well as medicines, the caravan also conducted health education that taught residents how to stay away from dengue as well as rabies.
Local residents, she said, were encouraged by nurses to clean their homes and surroundings in order to drive away mosquitoes that carry dengue.
They also distributed larvicidal solutions that could be sprayed to breeding places of mosquitoes.
Anti-rabies education was also prioritized due to the fact that 14 persons died of rabies in Pangasinan in 2016. (Ahicam Pasion/PNA)
