Remote Area Medical (RAM) Provides Healthcare to Forgotten Areas

According to the RAM website, “The vision for Remote Area Medical® developed in the Amazon rain forest where founder Stan Brock spent 15 years with the Wapishana Indians. He lived with the pain and suffering created by isolation from medical care. He witnessed the near devastation of whole tribes by what would have been simple or minor illnesses to more advanced cultures. When he left South America to co-star in the television series, "Wild Kingdom, " he vowed to find a way to deliver basic medical aid to people in the world's inaccessible regions.”

R.A.M. was founded in 1985 as a vast network of volunteers from the medical and dental professions who, along with volunteer pilots and aircraft, provide much needed healthcare to denizens of remote locales who don’t have access to medical care. The organization even provides veterinary care. All professionals travel at their own expense to treat hundreds of patients a day under grueling and difficult conditions.

Recently, R.A.M. was featured on 60 Minutes, because although the organization was founded to treat people in remote and underdeveloped areas of the world, they have recently been doing a lot of volunteering in the United States. Although many states don’t allow medical practioners to practice in states where they are not licensed, some, especially in the South, do and R.A.M. has held events in those areas so that people who do not have health insurance can get medical attention from donated supplies and volunteers. Lately, more and more free healthcare clinics have been held in the United States even though the organization was designed to help those overseas.

Hopefully, the healthcare industry in the United States will soon change and R.A.M can get back overseas, doing the work it was founded to do.