Grammy winner Paul Simon is lending a hand to a group of San Antonio nurses, who have been making trips to the Rockport area, which is recovering from Hurricane Harvey, News Radio 1200 WOAI reports.
Simon and his wife, singer Edie Brickell, co-founded the Children’s Health Fund, which donated $200 thousand to the School of Nursing at UT Health San Antonio, which is providing vital health care services to Texas Gulf Coast.
"We're going to see some of the communities that are a little further out," the school's Dr. Tracey Page says. "What we're hearing from the residents is that they feel forgotten."
Dr. Page and her team have been to the coast a handful of times, focusing on the medically underserved. Part of the work has been delivering flu vaccines, as well as vaccines for whooping cough and Hepatitis-A.
Harvey hit the area as a Category 4 hurricane, causing mass destruction, and there are still piles of wet, moldy trash.
"We anticipate a pretty big respiratory response to all the mold and all the debris in the area," she explains.
A quarter of Rockport’s residents are over 65, and in the rural areas, she says access to health care is limited. The project will last four months and, according to their outline, they hope to reach a minimum of 1,000 individuals by the end of December.
By that time, they hope to transition to the traditional medical services.
Dr. Page says the nurses going on these trips have been studying disaster response. Now, they get to see how it plays out in the real world.
IMAGE COURTESY: UT HEALTH SAN ANTONIO