Now a year old, the Universal Crescent Clinic will expand its operations by hosting a free clinic for Floridians hit hard by Hurricane Irma

SARASOTA — Mitsi Ito jammed all her medical visits in before moving back to the U.S. from Spain, knowing she’d have no safety net until she secured a job and health insurance. But when she felt an eye infection on the way, she didn’t have to wait.

“I’d been to the emergency room for my eyes before and wanted to avoid that," Ito said. "I’d be working soon, but until then I couldn’t afford to see a doctor.”

She’s one of many the volunteer staff at the Universal Crescent Clinic has helped since it opened a year ago. Its mission: to treat the uninsured.

Open every Saturday, the volunteer doctors see eight to fifteen patients in four hours, double the regular volume of a for-profit clinic. The specialists who volunteer their time at the clinic include a gastroenterologist, a cardiologist, an OB/GYN and an ophthalmologist.

UCC accepts anyone who is uninsured and cannot afford health care, regardless of their legal status. The clinic does not require ID.

Over the course of their first year, UCC staff expected to see many homeless and undocumented patients, but that hasn’t been the case. The bulk of their clients are people who make too much to qualify for aid, but too little to afford health insurance.

“More than half of the patients are working locals between the ages of 25 and 40,” cofounder and clinic director Ruta Jouniari said. “Many are in the service industry or between jobs and can’t afford health insurance due to rising living costs.”

Others are stuck in a brutal Catch-22: They can’t keep up at work due to an illness and lose their job as a result, along with their health insurance.

“One woman kept passing out at work and was laid off,” UCC medical director Dr. Shahnaz Ahmed said. “A simple blood transfusion got her back on her feet and to work.”

A practicing physician for more than 20 years, Ahmed said it’s heartbreaking to see people suffering from preventable diseases because of a simple lack of insurance.

The most common issues they treat are anxiety, depression and hypertension, Ahmed said.

Ahmed also has a personal mission: to build bridges in the community. Although the clinic is not affiliated with any religious organizations, she and some of the volunteers at UCC are Muslim.

“There’s no better way to express my devotion and my love for people than through doing what I do best,” she said.

Florida’s poorest

After a year of serving Sarasota’s sick and uninsured, the UCC team knows how to identify the need for accessible health care. That’s why they chose Immokalee as the site for their first mobile clinic.

The crew will set up in a church, House of Prayer, on Saturday from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. According to the Census Bureau, more than half of Immokalee’s residents have no health care coverage and the agricultural city was hit hard by Hurricane Irma.

“Undocumented people can’t ask FEMA for help and a lot of women and children have been left behind to wait since the men have left to look for other jobs due to Irma,” Ahmed said.

The small city bordering the Everglades provides a large share of tomatoes sold in the winter. The industry offers low-paying jobs to thousands of workers, mostly Hispanic and Haitian, living in trailers that are often too insecure to qualify for insurance. After Irma, many are gone or heavily damaged, and electricity was only recently restored.

Likewise, the fields and groves haven’t gone unscathed. Flooded and whipped by winds, the families are unsure of when they can get back to earning the little they depend on.

With trailers to fix and mouths to feed, the UCC’s mobile clinic is a humanitarian effort.

They’ll provide hot meals throughout the day and on-the-spot medication thanks to a volunteer pharmacist. The pastor of House of Prayer told Ahmed to expect 400-600 people.

Ahmed expects she and the other volunteer medical staff will see many patients with respiratory issues and skin wounds.

Aware of the long term medical needs of the Immokalee community, she hopes to bring the UCC mobile clinic there every four to six weeks.