Farm worker Arturo Magana, who picks lemons, oranges and avocados in the orchards of Ventura County, is the picture of health, his face burnished a deep brown, his body fit after 32 years of physical labor.
But last year, the 46-year-old Magana's employer sent him to Hawaii to pick coffee beans. There, he tested positive for tuberculosis, and he now takes medication to manage the condition.
Magana is one of the lucky ones with an employer who provides medical coverage. Most of the 1 million agricultural workers in California have no health insurance and cannot afford a doctor, leaving them oblivious to pressing health issues or to suffer in silence.
Uninsured and underserved by the medical industry, migrant workers can be unwitting carriers of communicable diseases, such as gonorrhea, chlamydia and all three types of hepatitis. Often unaccompanied by early symptoms, infectious diseases can be spread unknowingly through sexual contact, drug use and other high-risk behaviors, health officials said.
To reduce that possibility in Ventura County, a private agency and four rural health clinics run by Santa Paula Memorial Hospital and Ventura County Medical Center won a two-year, $500,000 grant from a health-care foundation and $30,000 more in tobacco settlement money to steer agricultural workers and their families to inexpensive health care.
The Ventura County Medical Resource Foundation and the rural health centers will hold free screenings this week at a migrant camp in Fillmore and another in Piru, specifically to detect and treat infectious diseases.
Known as La Familia Sana, or the Healthy Family, the program aims to reach male agricultural workers in rural Ventura County and help them find services that can provide long-term health care, said Kathy Kramer, grant project manager for the Ventura County Medical Resource Foundation, which helps find money for medical programs for the poor.
La Familia Sana will use the tobacco money to conduct the screenings and the grant from California Endowments to pay for follow-up visits by outreach workers.
Specially trained social workers, or los promotores, will talk with the estimated 110 residents of each camp about their health concerns and tell them about services such as Healthy Family or rural health clinics in Fillmore, Santa Paula and Piru, Kramer said.
