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Catholic church in Colonial Beach opens free medical clinic to help the area's needy Date published: 7/2/2005
By JESSICA ALLEN Magali Rodriguez hasn't been to a doctor in two years. The Colonial Beach resident and mother of three daughters under the age of 10 has no health insurance or money to pay expensive medical bills. So she was thrilled to discover that her church, St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in Colonial Beach, now runs a free medical clinic for poor and uninsured residents of Colonial Beach and Westmoreland County. Rodriguez, a Mexican native, went on a recent Saturday to the church's Guadalupe Free Medical Clinic because she was experiencing pain in her lower abdomen. She was diagnosed with an infection and received a prescription for antibiotics. "I would've stayed home and taken Tylenol for the pain," she said through an interpreter. "Now, I'll come here for my kids, family and friends." Rodriguez is part of the growing Hispanic population in Westmoreland County that is not receiving any medical treatment because of lack of insurance and money. There are about 7,000 Hispanics who live in the Northern Neck. When the Rev. Jerone Magat, a parochial vicar, was assigned to St. Elizabeth in October 2003, he assessed the community's needs and decided a free medical clinic was on top of the list. The state considers the Northern Neck medically underserved. Getting care got harder in December 2000, when all three of Colonial Beach's doctors stopped practicing in town. One moved to Fredericksburg and two retired, leaving the town of about 3,000 to rely on doctors based elsewhere who kept part-time hours in Colonial Beach. There was an eight-month stretch before Dr. Richard Dunn came in May 2000 and ran MediCorp's Colonial Beach Medical Center. But he moved last year to Warsaw. At the moment, two doctors and a nurse practitioner rotate their schedules to be at the Colonial Beach Medical Center on McKinney Boulevard every day, said Mindy Simms, office manager. Dr. Nizar Hussain is the full-time physician at Dominion Medical Center on Colonial Avenue in Colonial Beach. There is also a pediatrist. The closest free clinic used to be the Lloyd F. Moss Free Clinic in Fredericksburg, some 40 miles west. But Colonial Beach residents don't qualify for services because they live outside its range.
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