Hundreds Get Free Health Screenings

At booths and tables festooned with balloons, hundreds of low-income Valley residents received free medical care Sunday at a health fair in San Fernando.

The event at Santa Rosa Catholic Church, staffed by volunteer doctors and nurses, provided information on preventing disease as well as plenty of health screenings.

“Some of our community members actually use our health fair as their annual health checkup,” said Connie Cruz-Robles, coordinator of event, which was sponsored by the Latino Health Promoter Program of the Providence Holy Cross Medical Center.

The annual health fair, now in its ninth year, is held at the church because the location is easily accessible to a community that is “very underserved,” Cruz-Robles said.

In a courtyard and in several rooms, women and men sat patiently as medical professionals checked their blood pressure and teeth and screened them for diabetes.

Maria Amaro, 28, pressed a cotton ball on her fingertip and smiled when a nurse said her blood-sugar level was normal.

But not everyone was as lucky. One middle-aged man learned that he had both diabetes and a dangerously high blood glucose level.

“It happens every time we do a health fair, that we see patients come in who have diabetes or high blood pressure and don’t know about it,” said Dr. Siamak Basiratmand, the Valley Care/Olive View-UCLA Medical Center physician who referred the man to a hospital.

Outside a makeshift exam room, retired factory worker Barbara Juarez, 63, sat in a long line of women getting pap smears and mammograms. Because she has no health insurance, Juarez cannot afford doctor visits on her own, she said. Sunday marked the first time in more than two years that she has received such exams, she said.

The health fair, Juarez said, is “wonderful because it helps people in need.”