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Sandals Foundation donates equipment to St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital

Published:Wednesday | September 4, 2019 | 12:14 AM
From left: Karen Zacca, project manager, Sandals Foundation, and Lyndsay Isaacs, regional public relations manager at Sandals Resorts St Ann and Boscobel, look on as stroke rehabilitation patient Daisy Campbell-Barrett exercises arm mobility with the new rehabilitation arm skate. Assisting Campbell-Barrett is Debra Treasure, manager of physiotherapy services at the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital.
Contributed
From left: Karen Zacca, project manager, Sandals Foundation, and Lyndsay Isaacs, regional public relations manager at Sandals Resorts St Ann and Boscobel, look on as stroke rehabilitation patient Daisy Campbell-Barrett exercises arm mobility with the new rehabilitation arm skate. Assisting Campbell-Barrett is Debra Treasure, manager of physiotherapy services at the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital.

Sandals Foundation has utilised more than $600,000, raised from its Sandals Golf and Jerk Festival, held in May, to purchase equipment for the Physiotherapy Department of the St Ann’s Bay Regional Hospital.

The items included a recumbent exercise bike, mirror therapy box, two nine-hole pegboards, two rehabilitation hand, shoulder and arm skates, a treadmill, one digital stimulation unit, and two pinch pin resistance therapy exercises for fingers and hands.

Project manager at Sandals Foundation, Karen Zacca, who handed over the equipment, commended the hospital on its community outreach programme, which the equipment will also serve to enhance.

“Access to healthcare is very important, and what you do to bring awareness to our communities so they can understand prevention rather than treatment is commendable,” Zacca noted.

In accepting the donation, manager of physiotherapy services at the hospital, Debra Treasure, underlined the importance of the equipment, saying it would help patients from outside the northeast region.

“The closest physiotherapy department outside of this region would either be at Falmouth or at Spanish Town Hospital. Recently, they opened one in Linstead, but it’s still not yet fully functional. So persons in Guys Hill, St Catherine, or Kellits in Clarendon, which is quite a few hours away, still find it easier to come here for physiotherapy,” Treasure said.

Sixty-seven-year-old Daisy Campbell-Barrett, who suffered a stroke four months ago, was the first patient to utilise the rehabilitation arm skate, saying afterwards that it was a good exercise.

The 2019 Sandals Golf and Jerk Festival was held at the Sandals Golf and Country Club in celebration of the foundation’s 10th anniversary.

Proceeds from the tournament also support the foundation’s Care for Kids junior golf programme.

Major partners included Best Dressed Chicken, Caribbean Producers Jamaica Limited, Starbucks, Walkerswood, Sandals Ocho Rios, Beaches Ocho Rios, and Sandals Golf and Country Club.