Korea Zinc backs free medical care for over 2,000 underserved island residents

Korea Zinc announced Monday that it has sponsored Tongyeong Red Cross Hospital's free mobile clinic program — known as the Visiting Everyone's Care Center — providing free medical services to more than 2,000 residents in island communities to strengthen the regional medical safety net.

The Visiting Everyone's Care Center is funded by Korea Zinc and supported by the Community Chest of Korea. Now in its 11th year, the program aims to ease the financial burden on medically underserved populations in island areas and reinforce the local healthcare safety net.

Using Korea Zinc's sponsorship funds, Tongyeong Red Cross Hospital conducted 14 rounds of free mobile clinics from June last year through this month, serving 1,910 medically vulnerable residents across Tongyeong, Goseong-gun and Geoje. The program covered internal medicine, anesthesiology and pain management, neurosurgery, and orthopedics. A team of more than 20 doctors, nurses and other medical staff was deployed each session, providing consultations, prescriptions, medication and chronic disease management, among other services.

Separately from the mobile clinics, more than 100 residents received comprehensive in-hospital MRI brain vascular examinations. The recipients were selected from remote island communities that the mobile clinic team could not easily reach.

"We hope this program has helped address gaps in welfare services for medically underserved residents in island areas and contributed to protecting the health of local communities," a Korea Zinc official said. "We will continue our support to strengthen the regional medical safety net going forward."

Korea Zinc donates 3 billion won ($1.99 million) annually to the Community Chest of Korea to fund programs including the Visiting Everyone's Care Center. As of last year, its cumulative donations to the organization had reached 39.7 billion won.

Meanwhile, Korea Zinc has been carrying out a range of corporate social responsibility activities. Last Wednesday, employees from its Onsan Smelter visited Suyeon Rehabilitation Center — a facility in Ulju-gun, Ulsan, that provides childcare and rehabilitation treatment for children with severe disabilities — and took part in an environmental cleanup volunteer activity.