Partnership to aid low-income cancer patients

Teche Action Clinic is using Breast Cancer Awareness Month as a time to begin new partnerships, to educate, and to raise monies for low-income cancer patients in Houma, Dulac and Franklin.

Free help ranging from financial support to medical supplies and equipment is now available to Terrebonne and St. Mary parish residents who use Teche Action Clinics in Dulac, Houma and Franklin.

Miles Perret Cancer Services of Lafayette has launched an initiative – a traveling cancer bus service that will be located at the Teche Action headquarters at 1115 Weber St. in Franklin, from 1 to 3 p.m. on the second Wednesday of every month.

Perret Cancer Center Service Coordinator Tina Touchet said the mission of the bus, which is non-medical, is to “serve families in Acadiana and the surrounding areas fighting and surviving cancer, with care and compassion.”

The services are free and open to all cancer patients, regardless of income. The program provides free medicine; financial support in paying for a patient’s utilities; medical supplies and equipment; emotional support; cancer education; mastectomy items; wigs, hats, scarves and turbans; nutritional supplements; exercise programs and a children’s program.

Teche Action Clinic CEO and CAO Dr. Gary Wiltz welcomed the free services recently with a ribbon cutting ceremony. “Our health care heroes at Teche Action Clinic work hard every day at providing people in the community a heath care home so they can stay healthy and out of hospitals. Now that we have been blessed to partner with the Miles Perret Center in Lafayette, we’re going to take our services to another level in health care,” Wiltz said.

In operation since 1974, Teche Action, a federally qualified health center, operates a school-based clinic at West St. Mary High School in Baldwin, two clinics in Terrebonne Parish – one in Dulac and the other on West Tunnel Boulevard next to the Terrebonne Parish Council on Aging, and one in St. John Parish in Edgard. The clinics see patients on a sliding fee scale basis.

“The White House Office of Management and Budget has ranked health centers as one of the 10 most effective government programs – a designation earned by only six percent of all federal programs,” Wiltz said. “We save the United States health care system more than $17 billion a year by providing affordable, preventive health care to low-income, uninsured people who may rely on hospital emergency rooms as a source of care.”

In addition to St. Mary, the bus will travel to several other parishes in the state including Iberia, Vermilion, St. Martin, St. Landry, Lafayette, Jefferson Davis, Evangeline, Cameron, Calcasieu, Avoyelles and Acadia.

For more information on the Miles Perret Cancer Center and its services, visit their Web site at www.milesperretcenter.org or call (337) 984-1920.

Continuing its work to raise awareness during October, Teche Action is holding its annual 5K Run/Walk on Saturday, Nov. 1, to benefit the Adeline Guizene Breast Cancer Memorial Fund. The race will begin at 9 a.m. at the Courthouse Square in downtown Franklin. Proceeds from the event, which is part of the Franklin Harvest Moon Festival, are used by the clinic to pay for mammograms for women who fall within specific income guidelines.

Guizene, an employee of Teche Action Clinic, died as a result of aggravated breast cancer, which had returned after a number of years in remission.

For information on the event, contact Alfreida Edwards at (985) 397-1096 or Florence Beverly at (337) 828-2550, extension 145.

For information on the Teche Action Clinics, visit www.techeactionboard.org.

The Miles Perret Cancer Services of Lafayette and the Teche Action Clinic are teaming up to help Tri-parish low-income cancer patients. * Photo by HOWARD J. CASTAY JR.