Humboldt Medical Eye Associates will be providing free medical eye care to anyone in the community without health insurance today from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Dr. Michael Mizoguchi helped organize the event and will be providing eye care along side Dr. Andrew Mohammed. Betty Chinn will have social workers onsite to help with any public assistance and there will also be Spanish interpreters as well. 

“We are very excited to provide this free service to the community,” Mizoguchi wrote in an email.

The clinic is located at 2434 Harrison Avenue in Eureka. 

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Update:

The Outpost went and visited the good doctors at their clinic on Harrison Ave. this afternoon and chatted with Dr. Mizoguchi. He said this is the first time Humboldt Medical Eye Associates has done the free exams for folks without health insurance. Mizoguchi the free exams were away for him to give back to a community in need. 

“We have in this country a unique and crazy healthcare system that requires all people to have insurance, and when people don’t have that that have to rely on public assistance,” Mizoguchi told the Outpost in between patients. “When they don’t have that, they are in a heap of trouble.”

He said the free exams are a way to help people who are on the fringes of society like the homeless and the undocumented. He really wants to help the undocumented community because he fears they are being driven more and more underground to rely on necessary resources.

“If we can improve the health and dignity of the people on the fringes of our society, then that is going to increase the harmony in Humboldt County,” Mizoguchi said. 

The services Mizoguchi and Mohammed are providing at the free clinics are mostly just exams and writing prescriptions for eye glasses. Mizoguchi said there were a few minor procedures done today as well. The number of patients served today were a mix between some folks that Betty Chinn brought over and some of our undocumented community members. Mizoguchi said he had to cap the number of patients at around 40, but given the success of today he is hoping to expand the services if he can get some sponsors or funding. He said today’s event was a success and the next free eye care day will be on March 7, 2020.

“We saw a great need in the community and wanted to service the people who are in great need,” Mizoguchi said.