Left to Right, 1st ROW: Nurses Lourdes Orouno and Eric Jackson, doctors Robert Chang and Alvin Ong, Kris McGuire. ROW 2: Nursing assistants Miriam and Rosa. ROW 3: Nursing assistant Carolina, Nurses Barbara Sowa and Angie Portland, translators Lenny Rebecca Sigwarth Velasquez and Dick McGuire.

The 2017 Friends of Barron free medical clinic has come to close. This year, we treated over 100 adults, mostly the elderly, who were afflicted with both metabolic and orthopedic disease. Two American doctors, three nurses and a translator volunteered their time and paid their own expenses to travel to Mazatlan from the Pacific Northwest, Colorado and Connecticut in order to stage this, the fourth consecutive free medical clinic organized by FOB. Also participating for the first time this year was SAT-sponsored nurse Lourdes Orounó Soto and her team of three Mexican nurses-in-training.

Patients were seen both in the temporary “MASH”-type clinic in the town hall and in the privacy of their own homes if they were not ambulatory. While treatment of acute disease such as rhinitis, influenza and the like were way down, many orthopedic patients from last year’s clinic returned, hoping to benefit once again from pain relieving joint injections. Those suffering from diabetes, hypertension and other chronic disease were offered individual counseling along with expert advice on how to improve their lot.