Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps
Incorporated in March of 1985, the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps (RAM) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization with no paid employees. Using an airborne force of volunteers, the group provides free health care, veterinary services and technical and educational assistance in remote and rural areas of the United States and around the world.
The program was started by Stan Brock, who lived for years in the Amazon region of South America, an area with no health care whatsoever. When he left the region to co-host the "Wild Kingdom" television series, he continued to travel extensively still discovering medically helpless people around the world. Mr. Brock made it his mission to find a way to take medical care to people who had none.
Over half of RAM expeditions are in the United States, with most of those in East Tennessee. On American Indian reservations RAM teams conduct one week "health blitzes" designed to provide hard-to-find specialists or catch up long waiting lists of routine medical needs. Appalachian area clinics are two days, Saturday and Sunday, in communities which suffer from a lack of providers and/or have a large unemployed/uninsured population. County health departments, housing authorities, regional health agencies or private primary care facilities host the teams in these areas.
RAM volunteer health care delivery teams are comprised of physicians and surgeons of all specialties. Nurses, dentists, optometrists, veterinarians and support personnel travel to destinations as far away as South America. Team members pay their own expenses and are asked to bring medicines and other supplies.
Since 1992, there have been as many as 22 expeditions a year, totaling more than 86 expeditions with more than 71,400 patients served.
The program was started by Stan Brock, who lived for years in the Amazon region of South America, an area with no health care whatsoever. When he left the region to co-host the "Wild Kingdom" television series, he continued to travel extensively still discovering medically helpless people around the world. Mr. Brock made it his mission to find a way to take medical care to people who had none.
Over half of RAM expeditions are in the United States, with most of those in East Tennessee. On American Indian reservations RAM teams conduct one week "health blitzes" designed to provide hard-to-find specialists or catch up long waiting lists of routine medical needs. Appalachian area clinics are two days, Saturday and Sunday, in communities which suffer from a lack of providers and/or have a large unemployed/uninsured population. County health departments, housing authorities, regional health agencies or private primary care facilities host the teams in these areas.
RAM volunteer health care delivery teams are comprised of physicians and surgeons of all specialties. Nurses, dentists, optometrists, veterinarians and support personnel travel to destinations as far away as South America. Team members pay their own expenses and are asked to bring medicines and other supplies.
Since 1992, there have been as many as 22 expeditions a year, totaling more than 86 expeditions with more than 71,400 patients served.
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