Diabetes Medical Mission returns to SVG in March

After a successful trip to St.Vincent and the Grenadines in 2010, the Patsy Douglas Youth Empowerment Foundation’s Diabetes Medical Mission is heading here again.{{more}}

The group’s next mission takes place in March 2011.

The overall goal of the mission is to provide the tools for patients and staff, including education and actual medical supplies, in order to lower all diabetic-related complications, especially loss of limbs from amputations.

A large part of the mission will involve providing patients with necessary supplies for self-monitoring, as well as the clinics for continued monitoring of patients.

An appeal is now being made to all Vincentians to help in raising funds for the necessary medical supplies. The donations will be tax-deductible, as the Patsy Douglas Youth Empowerment Foundation is a non-profit (501c) organization. The organizers have stated that a suggested minimum donation is $20, which will purchase either one Diabetes survival kit or one A1C kit (which serves two patients).

A team, headed by Ann-Marie Lee-Wilkins, a native of St.Vincent and the Grenadines, who has established herself as a nurse in the United States, spent a week here last year promoting diabetic foot assessment, with the goal of preventing amputations among diabetics in this country.

Lee-Wilkins mentioned at the time that the medical mission is one of the initiatives being undertaken by the Sister Patricia-Ann Douglas Foundation, which she established in 2005 to continue the work of her best friend and former high school principal.

The foundation initially was established to give scholarships to empower underprivileged youths in St.Vincent and the Grenadines and Maryland, United States. However, it took on a second dimension in 2009 when Lee-Wilkins and her colleagues made their first missionary trip here and brought it under the auspices of the Patricia Ann Douglas Foundation.

Lee-Wilkins recognized that diabetes had become a big problem here, upon a visit to the state in 2006.

Upon her return to the United States, she mobilized her colleagues to make a contribution in St.Vincent and the Grenadines, by providing voluntary services.