This organization was profiled on a segment of 60 Minutes last night.

Incredible story- it's a group of medical people that go into remote areas on their weekends and provide people who wouldn't otherwise get any medical attention with medical, dental, and vision care - for free.

They started out going into the amazon in South America doing this- but now 60% or so of their work is in the U.S.! In other words, they are treating the U.S. as a third-world country based on the number of people with no medical benefits or under-insured as they stated (47,000,000).

On this particular weekend they had went to Knoxville - word got out they were coming and people drove great distances and waited for 7 hours in the parking lot just to get a number to be seen.

For those who can remember it, the guy who heads it - Stan Brock -used to appear on Wild Kingdom. Until recently he lived in a warehouse they use and took showers with a hose in the court yard.

Incredible story- here's a link to the organizations site:
http://www.ramusa.org/

Letter from the Founder:
Letter From The Founder
A half century or more ago, I was living in a part of the upper Amazon basin where health care was a 26-day march away on foot. I survived malaria, dengue fever, numerous wild animal attacks and various encounters with Longhorns and mustangs without the help of a doctor. Others were not so lucky and I buried a number of them. It occurred to me that designing an all-volunteer health and veterinary care program for such desolate places might make life easier for a whole lot of people. It took a few years to work out the concept, but in 1985, Remote Area Medical® was born. We have been called RAM ever since and in quite a few parts of the world, the appearance of a RAM Team means an opportunity for poor folks to get some real treatment free of charge from real doctors and veterinarians. But real doctors can’t do it without real help from nurses, technicians and all sorts of support people. In fact, over 26,000 of you have temporarily left your comfortable homes, jobs and families behind and signed up as RAM volunteers and about 300,000 patients are very glad you did.

So, if you are a physician, dentist, ophthalmologist, optometrist, veterinarian or any one of those support people these specialists cannot function properly without, please realize how important you are to the lives of thousands of people in desperate need of your help.

Browse through our web site and see where your skills might fit in. Then give us a call or signal us via e-mail. Yes, we fly airplanes that are probably older than you are and sometimes we parachute out of them. And, although you should glance at our WARNING page, don’t be deterred. Most of our work is done with two feet on solid ground and you don’t have to be an athlete to participate. You just need to be willing and compassionate.

I look forward to seeing you.

Stan Brock
http://www.ramusa.org/about/letter.htm