Medical donation helps relief organization
Monday, December 13, 2004

By JESSICA FISCHER
Times-News

Wayne Smith (left), a volunteer with Remote Area Medical Foundation, accepted medical equipment from Dr. Todd Salyers with Brookside Vision Center. Harry Ennis and Dennis Powell, both Lions Club members, helped coordinate the donation. Photo by Emily Ennis.

Dr. Todd Salyers, an optometrist at Brookside Vision Center, was in the process of updating some of the equipment in his office recently when he contacted the Lions Club of Kingsport in search of someone who might be able to use it.

"I knew of a couple of national organizations, but I wanted to pursue any local ones first," said Todd, who also collects used eyeglasses for the Lions Club to recycle.

Club member Harry Ennis told Todd that the Lions didn't really have a need for the equipment, but he knew of a group that did.

Knoxville-based Remote Area Medical, a non-profit airborne relief organization founded in 1985 by television actor Stan Brock, relies on volunteer doctors, nurses, support workers, veterinarians and pilots, along with donations of medical supplies, medicines, facilities and vehicles to get medical care to people in inaccessible regions.

Stan first became aware of the need for such an organization while living 15 years with the Wapishana Indians in the Amazon rain forest. Then, when he left South America to do the "Wild Kingdom" television series, he found medically helpless people throughout the world. His desire to find a way to bring health care to people who had none was the seed of RAM.

Harry knew about RAM through his friendship with fellow Lion Dennis Powell of Johnson City, who met Stan in the mid-1980s while the two were in Haiti on missions.

"I was going for the District 12-N Lions clubs because our district was in the thought process of raising money to equip a three-room hospital in Haiti to do medical services, so I went to Haiti with that purpose in mind," Dennis said. "Our missionary that had done that was now bedridden with AIDS that she had contracted doing blood work there, so I was going in her place.

"I met Stan Brock through her and his group was going to do a medical mission and I participated in that while I was there for five days along with trying to gather the information that we needed. Because they had very little money to fund the projects to purchase some of the medicines and some of the supplies, I suggested that we form a medical foundation, and Stan and the board authorized me to do that. An attorney here in town did legal work for us, and we formed Remote Area Medical Foundation."

Through the foundation, folks can make tax-deductible donations of money and/or medical equipment, supplies and other items.

Dennis said it's something he wishes more professionals like Dr. Todd Salyers would do.

"They get a tax write-off, and it far exceeds what they would get for it on trade-in," he said.

It also benefits thousands of area residents.

During an expedition at the Wise County Fairgrounds in Wise, Va., earlier this summer, 902 RAM volunteers provided free medical care to more than 6,000 patients.

Dentists extracted more than 3,200 bad teeth and filled 932 more. General medical doctors gave nearly 3,400 consultations. One hundred four women received mammograms, and almost 1,100 people were given eye exams and free prescription glasses, many of which were made on site in the RAM mobile eyeglass lab.

The total value of free care delivered in those two and a half days was a staggering $946,326.

RAM also conducts yearly expeditions in Mountain City and in Wartburg, Tenn., just outside of Knoxville.

"It's gratifying to see what can be done by the help of a lot of people," Dennis said. "No one person does it."

Tax-deductible donations may be sent to the Remote Area Medical Foundation at 1834 Beech St., Knoxville, Tenn. 37920.

For more information, call (865) 579-1530.

To find out more about the Lions Club's eyeglass recycling project, log onto www.kingsportlionsclub.org.