SHAS­TRI BOODAN

A Mus­lim or­gan­i­sa­tion based in Cen­tral Trinidad is of­fer­ing its med­ical fa­cil­i­ties to be used as a vac­cine dis­tri­b­u­tion point.

Imam Rasheed Karim, the Chair­man of the Is­lam­ic Fi­daal Ser­vice Trust (IF­ST) made the an­nounce­ment on Mon­day, when the IFTS held its free clin­ic at Ash-Shif­fa Med­ical Cen­tre at Ca­can­dee Road, Fe­lic­i­ty.

Imam Karim said be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, the IFTS was bring­ing doc­tors to deal with per­sons who could not af­ford med­ical treat­ment.

Not­ing that Fe­lic­i­ty has a pop­u­la­tion around 15,000, the Imam point­ed out that set­ting up a vac­cine site in the com­mu­ni­ty would go a long way to­wards erad­i­cate the COVID-19 virus.

Imam Karim al­so ap­pealed for med­ical per­son­nel to vol­un­teer their time to the clin­ic and for the Gov­ern­ment to get on board with their ef­forts.

"This fa­cil­i­ty is avail­able to this gov­ern­ment and any gov­ern­ment, in fact," he said.

Ch­agua­nas May­or Faaiq Mo­hammed praised the IFTS for bring­ing free health­care to the com­mu­ni­ty.

"There are low-in­come fam­i­lies who can­not af­ford health care. This will help per­sons with co­mor­bidi­ties," he said.

May­or Mo­hammed said he would be li­ais­ing with oth­er en­ti­ties to get free clin­ics across the bor­ough.