A True Champion

Former boxer Gregory Davis, who lives in Eastover in New Orleans East has done what the City of New Orleans under the "leadership" of Nagin could not do:
He has opened a medical center in the East.

From the T.P.
he built a 1,600-square-foot primary health care clinic from scratch at 9890 Lake Forest Blvd. It opens Tuesday.


The Champion Medical Center, which stands literally in the shadow of the shuttered Pendleton Memorial Methodist Hospital, has an internal medicine specialist, a family practice doctor, a nurse practitioner and a medical assistant on staff to handle routine check-ups and a host of basic medical ailments.

It boasts three examination rooms, a doctor's office, a waiting room lobby and a small triage area for patients with diabetes, high blood pressure, coughs, colds, the common flu, stomach aches and minor cuts, said Cynthia Kudji, the staff nurse practitioner. The clinic also will perform Pap smears, breast exams, childhood immunizations and school and employee physicals, she said.

The clinic will handle up to 40 patients a day, Kudji said. It is open on Monday and Wednesday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. and on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The Champion Medical Center addresses the shortage of medical care that has plagued the neighborhood since Hurricane Katrina, said Davis, a boxer who was born in Chicago and moved to Eastover when he was 9.

Meanwhile, Mayor Ray Nagin's administration has been working to buy Methodist Hospital since 2007, but the city and the hospital owners haven't agreed on a price. (sounds like 6 Flags debacle, doesn't it?) Both Nagin and outgoing recovery czar Ed Blakely have said a deal between the city and the hospital's handlers is close, though no one has predicted an exact date.

Pointing at Methodist's building from outside his clinic on Saturday, Davis said: "There wasn't time to wait for all that. We needed something now."

Bless Mr. Davis.