MONTEGO BAY, St James — Time is running out for 16-year-old Angelina Brown’s family to raise $1.6 million needed to buy items needed for surgery to straighten her curved spine.

The teenager’s father Marcus Brown says she is becoming increasingly worried they will not be able to get the procedure done at Kingston Public Hospital (KPH) in August.

“She is going through a state of depression and anxiety right now… She feel pain now and then but I can’t take the depression and that on her right now,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

According to Brown, after Angelina’s struggle with scoliosis was highlighted by the Observer last July, KPH indicated that the surgery could be done there.

“We just need some assistance to gather the money… for the [spine straightening] implants because the implants are $1.6 million as what we see on the invoice. That’s the biggest problem,” said Brown.

“We went up there the 11th of January, because we did get an appointment to go back to KPH, and they gave us one for August coming,” he explained.

He said efforts to get financial support have not been very successful.

“We haven’t gotten response from the National Health Fund (NHF) or the Compassionate Health Fund,” revealed Brown.

“We’ve sent all the information necessary, all the documents what they have asked for. We also set up a new GoFundMe and we started to generate a little but it just stopped all of a sudden; I don’t know,” he said dejectedly.

When contacted, NHF CEO Everton Anderson told the Observer he would look into the matter and provide a response as soon as possible.

As Brown waits for news, he racks his brain about what else he can do to source the funds needed to improve his daughter’s quality of life.

“I was even planning to go overseas to a job in The Bahamas but the work permit didn’t come through as yet,” he said.

“If I had some money I would even try a fish fry; I have people who would be willing to help me to organise and that would generate some money and then do a cake sale after that — probably in the summer. But I never wanted to wait until August,” he lamented.

His anxiety is made worse by the impact Angelina’s illness is having on her education. Brown said his child stopped attending school as her condition has worsened.

“Them not sending the schoolwork online, I think the school would have done that but nothing like that,” he said.

He is also worried that if the surgery is not done soon, the scoliosis will take a permanent toll on Angelina.

“It go affect her if we don’t get to do it, so we would like to get it done as soon as possible; but it’s the matter of the implants,” appealed the desperate father.

Donations towards purchasing the implants needed for the surgery may be made to Scotiabank.

Account name: Angelina Brown

Account type: Savings

Branch: Sam Sharpe Square

Account: 803561.