Sunflower Lane Apartment residents were provided the opportunity to have health screenings and receive a free turkey for Thanksgiving last week.
Choices for Children and Family Healthcare Services & Choices Dental out of Jackson came to the Sunflower Lane Apartment on Center Street Thursday and provided free family health screenings, flu shots and COVID tests. Johnson Family Trucking LLC out of Raymond provided 20 free turkeys that went to families with completed screenings. North Sunflower Medical Center out of Ruleville provided free hand sanitizer and masks.
Everything took place outside and not in the office to help maintain social distancing and keep everyone safe.
“It was basically needed for the community,” said Brondon McAfee II, social services coordinator for Sunflower Lane Apartments. “During this time, with the changing of the weather, with COVID going on, I wanted to just kind of give the residents an opportunity to come out and get a wellness check as well as COVID and a flu shot, if needed. And, also, the incentive to give a free turkey.”
Providing a free turkey does more than keep kids exposed.
“Due to financial hardship, with COVID, a lot of people are out of work. A lot of people need the turkeys, basically, to eat for Thanksgiving,” McAfee said.
Since the COVID pandemic hit in March, things have not been as bad as they could be at the Sunflower Lane Apartments.
“To be honest, what we’ve witnessed here, at these apartments, it’s been below average,” McAfee said. “We haven’t had too many spikes of COVID.”
McAfee said people have been in isolation going back to the summer when feeding and enrichment programs were cut for 2020.
“This summer, we kind of canceled those things due to safety reasons,” McAfee said. “We think that kind of helped as well with the low COVID over here by not having those programs.”
Dr. Samuel Jones with Choices for Children and Family Healthcare Services & Choices said he has been to Clarksdale at least twice with the organization.
“This is, I’d like to say, an ancestral home,” Jones said. “My parents all were reared here. My older sisters were reared in this area many, many years ago.”
Jones himself is from Winona in Montgomery County. He said the owners of the organization are from Belzoni and make sure they go to many locations in the Delta.
“It’s the kids,” Jones said. “This organization, they take care of kids. They make services available for kids who would otherwise have a difficulty accessing healthcare. I’ve been impressed with that.
“As long as they have the kids, I can’t resist coming because I feel that it’s a very worthy thing they’re doing.”
Jones said a family of four had a health screening within his first hour of arrival. He expected the results to come back in a few days.
“I think people everywhere have the same problems, everywhere we go,” Jones said. “I imagine that would also be true I would imagine if I were to visit other countries. It seems like the old human body – 23 pair of chromosomes tend to be everywhere.”
Kathy Bryant, community educator for North Sunflower Medical Center, was glad to help out.
“Brondon is so active to have events like this for his residents in this apartment complex,” Bryant said. “He does an outstanding job.
“At least what I do is provide the things that they need to help protect themselves and to keep them from spreading to someone else.”
Bryant said there were two cases of two-ounce hand sanitizer, two cases of four-ounce hand sanitizer, one case of eight-ounce hand sanitizer and 100 masks.
“They can get however much they want as long they use it,” Bryant said.
