Remote Area Medical to host 5 mobile medical clinics in struggling Puerto Rico

Volunteers from Remote Area Medical will return this week to Puerto Rico, where they plan to aid efforts to help the people recover from the damage caused by Hurricane Maria in September.

A team of close to 50 volunteers will travel to Puerto Rico during the next three weeks to provide a variety of free medical services including dental work, vision services, and general medical exams at five mobile medical clinics set to traverse the western part of the island.

The three-week excursion will be RAM’s third trip to Puerto Rico since Hurricane Maria made landfall, and RAM Founder and President Stan Brock said he expected relief efforts in Puerto Rico to continue into the new year.

“There’s a huge amount of devastation, and some of the services are still not up to par,” Brock said. “The telephones and the cellphone towers, power, electricity and clean water; it’s going to be a long, hard road for the people down there.

“I’m sure we’re going to be following up with more of these events as we get into 2018,” he added.

Brock explained that RAM has been able to bring thousands of pounds of disaster-relief supplies to the island through donations from corporations like FedEx and Cigna of Chattanooga, who donated 20,000 ready-to-eat meals to go with RAM on their upcoming mission.

“The public have really come forward with tremendous help with the essential relief supplies, and FedEx donated a plane-load of 63,043 pounds of essential relief supplies,” Brock said. “We trucked all that stuff to Memphis, and they flew it down there for us at no charge. They came through again and carried the vision and dental equipment there to make this possible.

“I’ve been doing this volunteer work now for over 30 years, and it never ceases to amaze me, the kindness of the American people,” he added.

During RAM’s first two trips to Puerto Rico, Brock said, he and his volunteers worked to establish a foothold of sorts on the island and collaborated with local officials to help determine where their supplies and efforts would be best put to use. Ultimately, RAM decided on five locations in western Puerto Rico near a former U.S. Air Force base in the city of Aguadilla, on the island’s northwest corner. Part of RAM’s continued response to Puerto Rico’s need for humanitarian assistance relies on its ability to move quickly to help those in need, Brock said, an aspect that has been point of contention with the federal government’s response.

“We have the capability here,” Brock said. “When bad stuff happens, we don’t have to have a long debate like up in Washington. We say, ‘Bad stuff just happened in Houston (for example); we’re going to go.’ ”

However, RAM’s group of volunters does face some legal challenges in practicing outside the states in which they are licensed. According to Brock, state laws from across the country prevent many of the group’s volunteers from practicing as part of its mobile clinics, which he says unnecessarily impedes its charity work. Despite the costs and challenges, dozens of volunteers still dedicate their time to RAM’s humanitarian efforts, in part because of the difference they are able to make in the lives of others.

“When somebody gets out of the dental chair and hugs the dentist or hugs the optometrist and puts on a pair of glasses and can see, you know you’ve really made a difference in their lives,” Brock said.

To fulfill its goal of helping as many people as possible, RAM is searching for additional licensed dental, vision, and medical professionals to volunteer their time in Puerto Rico. More information about volunteering can be found at www.ramusa.org/volunteer.

To make a donation, visit ramusa.org/donate/.