RAM: Foreign Aid helping American Health Crisis

  It’s nearly 6am on a Saturday in early February and pitch-black on the fringes of the Smoky Mountains in Knoxville, Tennessee. A tall, lean man with thick grey hair in a weathered leather bomber jacket and khaki uniform strides over to the metal gate where a crowd has gathered. Hundreds of people, shivering and wrapped in blankets, push gently forward, each clutching a tiny paper ticket.

Some are elderly. Some have teeth chattering and are aching so badly that they can barely stand. Most have slept in their cars. The man before them is about to call out numbers. He will provide assistance. He will end their suffering.

“Okay, folks,” he shouts, his breath visible in the frigid air, “we’re going to bring in the first 50.”

He stands bone-straight, hands clasped behind him. A British voice, sonorous and genial, silences the crowd. He begins calling out numbers. One by one they step forward. Through the open gate, up the small paved hill and into the building. They move at different paces. A few are limping, others are skipping, and one woman in her twenties and wearing flannel pyjama bottoms and bootee slippers is jumping for joy as she races indoors. They have not won something. Nor are they the first to arrive for a concert or a state fair. They are excited because soon they will have the chance to see a doctor, a dentist or an ophthalmologist. All they have been given is the opportunity to have their basic healthcare needs met. No payment necessary. No questions asked.

For the next two days, the Jacobs building will house the 561st Remote Area Medical (Ram) expedition. In just a few short hours its empty structure will be transformed into a mammoth field hospital.

Less than 24 hours earlier, the Ram trucks arrived with medical supplies. Dental chairs, sterilising machines, auto-refractors and eye charts, everything from the silver for fillings to wooden tongue depressors. Volunteers began unpacking boxes of sterile gloves, opening crates of cotton wool and paper gowns, delineating sections for eye clinics and examination rooms. Hundreds of volunteers, thousands of dollars of equipment — all of it donated.

Stan Brock is the man overseeing the operation. He founded the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps, a non-profit-making organisation, in 1985, but he had the idea when he lived in the Amazon in the 1950s. He has carried out medical relief missions all over the world, but increasingly his focus has been on the poorest Americans.