WESTERN BUREAU – A $20-million medical centre designed to cater to the needs of Montego Bay’s poor has opened its doors in the western city and will serve persons especially from the communities of Canterbury, Albion, Paradise Rowe and other areas of the city.

The facility, which is called the Brenda Strafford Medical Centre, is the brainchild of the Good Shepherd Foundation – a Roman Catholic-run charitable organisation. It is located on the same compound of the Foundation’s AIDS Hospice and the Home for Charlotte’s Children.

The medical centre, which was officially opened on September 4 with much fanfare and pageantry, will house the Hope Clinic that was located on the compound of the Blessed Sacrament Cathedral.

Chairman of the Good Shepherd Foundation Pino Maffessanti said construction of the medical centre began last November and was expected to have been finished in April of this year.

“Unfortunately, the contractor took sick and was very sick for quite some time and therefore we had a delay. It should have been completed in July, but we have finally made it,” he said.

The patients who will seek medical attention at the clinic, he said, would not be able to pay the full price for services provided, and the institution would have to stay afloat through donations from charities and philanthropists.

“We have no money, the people that come here can hardly be charged because they are destitute and that is our motto: to try and help those who have no money, especially in the area that (the medical centre is located),” Maffessanti said.

The Brenda Strafford Medical Centre’s offerings will include holistic medical care, an eye clinic and dentistry. It will be supported by local doctors, but overseas medical practitioners such as dentists and eye specialists will be regularly flown into the island to offer voluntary service.

Maffessanti said there are plans to extend the building to make more room for persons living with AIDS, as the hospice which is on the compound is cramped for space.

“We finished an extension about a year ago and we now house about 32 people, but unfortunately we have people outside waiting and we have to put in another extension,” he explained. The hospice was completed at a cost of $15 million, the same as the children’s home.

According to Maffessanti, the funds used to build the Brenda Strafford Medical Clinic, the AIDS hospice and the children’s home came from donations from both locals and donors abroad. The buildings are constructed on lands acquired by the Brenda Strafford Foundation, which was bought about five years ago.

Canadians Brenda Strafford and her husband Dr Barry Strafford are known for their work with children and the destitute in Canada, the Dominican Republic and Haiti. Brenda Strafford was killed in a car accident in Canada roughly 25 years ago and Dr Strafford established the foundation in his wife’s honour.

He told the Observer that they intend to name the complex the Village of Hope. “The whole project consists of the medical centre, the hospice and Charlotte’s Home and other things we might put out there – we originally decided to call it the Village of Hope – and that is what we will be identifying later on,” Strafford said.