Health trends

Food For The Poor opens Jamaica 50 school

Food For The Poor (FFP) recently officially opened the Kings Infant School, formerly known as the Long Hill Basic School, in Long Hill, Westmoreland. It is the first early childhood institution to be built for the parish of Westmoreland and the county of Cornwall under the FFP Jamaica 50 Campaign, which seeks to build and or upgrade 50 early childhood institutions within 50 months.

This Food For The Poor Programme is celebrating Jamaica's 50th year of Independence, by expanding access to high quality pre-primary facilities for the nation's youth.

The Kings Infant School will serve the communities of Long Hill, Whitehouse, Red Gate and Petersville. It boasts three classrooms, a sick bay, an office for the teachers, a kitchen, and bathrooms.

Delivering remarks at the opening ceremony, Samantha Mahfood, executive director, Food For The Poor Canada, announced that among the other communities in Westmoreland which will benefit from the FFP Jamaica 50 Campaign are: Culloden, Content, Argyle Mountain, Orange Hill, Carmel, Reid's Mountain and Paul Island.

All parishes in the county of Cornwall will be receiving early childhood facilities, under the campaign.

"Some other areas in Cornwall which will benefit from new early childhood schools are Esher and Rejoin in Hanover, Pepper and Bethsalem in St Elizabeth, as well as Point and Sunderland in St James," Mahfood disclosed.

Source: Food For The Poor

Ophthalmological Society of Jamaica holds symposium

Eyesight is not the same as eye health, advised Dr Gordon Robotham, president of the Ophthalmological Society of Jamaica (OSJ), as he welcomed more than 100 persons to the first eye symposium for the public put on by the OSJ.

The mostly over 60-year-old turnout, who gave up their Sunday afternoon for information on eye health, sat attentively through the talks given in the Main Medical Lecture Theatre at the University Hospital of the West Indies, as they absorbed the wealth of information provided by ophthalmologists and nurses.

When graphic images were shown, such as a nail penetrating an eye during Dr Cameron-Swaby's presentation or the video on the procedure to remove a cataract shown by Dr Carl Hamilton, some members squirmed in their seats. Participation was full when it was time for questions.

Among the topics covered in the three-and-a-half-hour health-information session were diabetes and the eye, eye emergency, how to protect the eye, glaucoma, cataract, the impact of high blood pressure, cholesterol and sickle cell on the eye, as well as how to add eye drops to the eyes.

Source: Shermaine Robotham