Community clinic serves Hispanic farmworkers

Los Angeles, Feb 5 (EFE).- A community-health clinic founded 38 years ago in Northern California's Napa Valley is providing uninsured Hispanic farmworkers in the area with access to high-quality, affordable medical care.

"In 1972, at a meeting of the Latin American Economic Liberation Organization (known by the Spanish acronym OLLE), I proposed that we establish a clinic so that farmworkers could pay nothing or just a minimum fee," Clinic Ole co-founder Placido Garcia, 78, told Efe.

Garcia, who currently works as superintendent of the Chateau Santa Elena vineyard, said the idea emerged after a visit to a clinic for farmworkers in nearby Sonoma, California.

"There were clinics in Napa Valley, but farmworkers without health insurance had to pay for the visits, which, in addition to the cost of examinations and medicine, ended up being really expensive. And for someone who was ill, a couple of doctor's visits could eat up an entire month's salary," he said.

OLLE's members approved the proposal in January 1972 and by Sept. 17 of that year a location had been secured and a staff of volunteer health professionals began attending to local farmworkers.

"All the tables and examination equipment were donated to us from a government warehouse with field hospitals used in World War II," Garcia said.

According to the co-founder, after the clinic was established, the farmworkers would say "they always hoped that when they were sick and had no money that Clinic Ole would still treat them."

He said that there were 7,100 farmworkers in Napa Valley in 1972, 98 percent of whom were Hispanic, but that that number has now tripled.

Many full-time workers at California vineyards now have benefits, including medical insurance, thanks to the labor activism of Cesar Chavez, the late leader of the United Farm Workers union.

"But the situation of most uninsured farmworkers, who work only at harvest-time, is the same when they get sick as it was when the clinic was founded in 1972," Garcia said.

Maria Criscione Stel, the clinic's director of development, told Efe that $9 million must be taken in annually to cover operational costs and to pay a staff of 200 employees, who provide health care to roughly 23,000 people.

Half of that money comes from "foundation grants, the government and private donations. That's why we can offer low-cost services, and if (patients) don't have money we can offer a plan to pay in installments; in special cases, they don't pay anything," he said.

"Each year, vineyard owners hold an international wine auction and they donate much of what they raise to the clinic; thanks to them, we've built a beautiful building," Criscione Stel said.

Robert Moore, Clinic Ole's medical director, told Efe that the lack of a national health care system in the United States forces many uninsured people to rely on community clinics.

"The most common cases at Clinic Ole are respiratory illnesses, allergies, occasionally some fractures, work-related lacerations and contusions and depression, as well as chronic illnesses such as diabetes and high-blood pressure," Moore said.

"About 77 percent of all people we attend to are Hispanics and therefore most of our staff speaks Spanish," he said.