Remote Area Medical Foundation
Pioneers of No-Cost Health Care
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RAM History
Stan and snake
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.
The organization was founded in 1985 and years of research and planning yielded a vast, carefully developed network of men and women who have come together to make RAM a highly mobile, remarkably efficient relief force. Volunteers are doctors, nurses, technicians, and veterinarians who go on expeditions at their own expense and treat hundreds of patients a day under some of the worst conditions.
Vision exam

Volunteers have provided general medical, surgical, eye, dental, and veterinary care to tens of thousands of people and animals, with 60% of the expeditions serving rural America. There are plans for expansion of US expeditions, an airborne medical treatment center, a permanent clinic site in Guyana, and a program start-up in Africa.

And...there are dreams. Dreams for a comprehensive center of operations.Dreams for learning the medicinal secrets of the rain

forest while teaching a continent how -- and why -- to save it. Dreams for a flying hospital. Dreams of a world where people help each other just because they can.
On March 3 2004, the Senate at the state capitol in Nashville Tennessee passed a resolution honoring Remote Area Medical® for "Compassion and Dedication to providing medical care." Founder Stan Brock is shown here with Governor Phil Bredesen with the award.
 
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