NEW YORK, United States. – On October 23, 2007, the Batey Relief Alliance will officially grand open a modern medical facility to the service of poor children and families living in the bateyes and urban and rural localities of the Monte Plata region. The facility will also serve as the celebration site for the organization’s 10-year anniversary.

Since 2005, the complex, located inside batey Cinco Casas in the district of Don Juan, has been providing essential medicines and critical health services in primary care, pediatrics, ophthalmology, gynecology, dentistry, HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment, preventive health education and laboratory to more than 15,000 annually. It is also equipped with a large warehouse to store containers of donated medicines, medical supplies and equipment, a dormitory to house long-term foreign volunteers and local medical residents and interns, a play ground, and an ambulance.

The facility, originally built decades ago by the Dominican government to house sugar cane cutters working the cane fields, has been completely renovated into a modern facility—while preserving its original architectural structures, through generous funds from the Lions Clubs International Foundation, the Clinton Foundation and the Dominican State Sugar Council (CEA).

According to the Dominican Daily Newspaper HOY, the center had become the first and only modern medical facility ever built inside any batey since the beginning of the sugar plantations era in the Dominican Republic in 1517. A recent study conducted by the Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health and School of International and Public Affairs also found that 96% of patients who visited the center are extremely satisfied with the services, and that the organization has greatly improved the batey population’s ability to obtain available health and HIV/AIDS services.

For more information about the humanitarian health work of the Batey Relief Alliance, please visit its website at www.bateyrelief.org or contact the organization’s CEO, Ulrick Gaillard at bra@bateyrelief.org or (917) 627-5026.