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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. |
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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 |
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