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Jamie Smith, tbnewswatch.com
A local organization needs help to save lives in Cuba.
Medical Equipment Modernization Opportunity is building a mobile mammography unit. They have the volunteers, the materials and even the mammography machine but the organization needs $10,000 to ship it once the whole unit is complete.
MEMO president Jerome Harvey said the mobile unit would be the second unit sent to Cuba and that screenings can reduce the mortality rate of breast cancer to five per cent.
“In Canada we’re very fortunate because we have breast screening readily available and it’s free. In Cuba MEMO is running the only breast screening program in the country and so in gratefulness for what we have here in Canada we were hoping to extend this blessing to women in Cuba,” Harvey said.
MEMO volunteers were busy Wednesday morning in a warehouse on Simpson Street as they were putting the mobile unit together. While Cuba has universal health care, complete with personnel to run the units, their infrastructure is lacking.
“They’re like an army that has no weapons or ammunition so we provide this to them,” Harvey said.
MEMO, which is volunteer run and exists solely through donations, tried to get money from the federal government to fund the shipping but were turned down. Harvey said the need for breast screening in Cuba, especially in places like Villa Clara where the mobile unit is bound, is great.
“That’s our big problem. The project really calls for 10 of these mobile mammography machines which would then cover a population of about one million women but we can’t do that because we don’t have the money,” he said.
Anyone wishing to donate can do so through www.memocuba.org.