UVa Health has heroes on staff

Claudette Dalton Albemarle County
Published: August 1, 2008

For the last eight years, the University of Virginia Health System and other local health care providers have fielded a unique and dedicated group of health professionals to the Remote Area Medical Clinic in Wise. This clinic occurs each July for only two and a half days and serves between 800 and 1,000 patients for medical care each year.

The patients served are among the neediest in Virginia, almost all are without any insurance and most are without adequate access to care — especially specialty care.
They come for dental and vision care as well, but it is their lack of medical care that is the core problem that makes them such an incredibly unhealthy patient population.

The incidence of almost every disease is far higher in this region than in any other region of the commonwealth.

While the UVa team is not the only group to participate, it is by far the largest. And the University Health System supports nearly all of the supplies, equipment and testing.

This is a huge effort, carried out far from home and in the heat and an occasional howling rainstorm. It brings care to the neediest population in Virginia and brings a level of care that entirely belies the crude M*A*S*H-like setting in old buildings and tents. 

This year, the event was July 25-27.) About 200 UVa and Charlottesville health professionals, students and support staff loaded up supplies of all kinds — ultrasound machines, echo machines, a laboratory, a pharmacy and countless other pieces of equipment and offered women’s health, general medical, colon cancer screening, emergency care, cardiology, endocrinology, neurology, mammograms, telemedicine and a host of other services.

They saw 982 patients and worked in sweltering heat for 12 hours a day, without complaint and often without time to eat.
The love and caring that are displayed by the UVa team and the other wonderful doctors and nurses are simply heroic.

No one who asks for help is left uncared for. Whatever is needed is given.
I offer the volunteers my profound gratitude for eight years of service.