For many people in the Valley, going to see the doctor could be considered a luxury. But the grand opening of another free-of-cost healthcare clinic in Cameron County plans to change that.

For many people in the Valley, going to see the doctor could be considered a luxury. But the grand opening of another free-of-cost healthcare clinic in Cameron County plans to change that.

The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley will open a clinic housed at the Bob Clark Center in southern Brownsville.

The center has another clinic from University of Texas Houston.

On Wednesday, three Brownsville residents were waiting to be seen by a nurse outside the UT Houston clinic. All will be receiving free primary medical care from that clinic.

“I put in an application at Su Clinica Familiar, and to this day, they haven’t called me back,” said Olga Lidia Leal from Brownsville.

Leal says she got tired of waiting to see a doctor at Su Clinica Familiar — a low-cost doctor’s office in Brownsville—and decided to come to the community center to see a physician. Some decide not to go to a doctor at all.

“It’s bad, of course, it’s bad,” said Carolina Ortega, a nurse who will be working at UTRGV’s healthcare clinic.

Ortega is from the university’s school of medicine and has seen how the lack of medical care for area residents has led to future health problems.

“No, I never got sick, until now,” said Armando Leal, another patient waiting to be seen that UT Houston clinic.

Starting next week, UTRGV will also offer a free healthcare clinic staffed with nurses. This is all thanks to a federal five-year grant worth more than $3 million from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

“There’s a lot of undocumented people that are afraid of just leaving their house [and] going into the clinic,” Ortega said.

Ortega says the clinic will not ask for a patient’s immigration status.

“A lot of these people are living on a daily by daily basis,” Ortega said. “They leave themselves for last.”

UTRGV’s School of Medicine offers two other medical clinics in San Carlos in Hidalgo County and La Victoria in Starr County.