Welcome to America

Remote Area Medical

Crit

The titular organization was founded to help people in South America deprived by poverty and distance from medical care, but as this documentary, set in Appalachian Tennessee, shows, the focus has pulled back to address the Third World as it exists within our own borders.

Bad teeth (and not always, as people tend to assume, says a woman about whom I'm sorry to say I'd already assumed thus, because of crystal meth), bad pumps (a 61-year-old who says he last saw a doctor when he was about 16 registers a blood pressure reading of 220/160), bad lungs (a smoker since 16 has her first-ever chest X-ray at 50 or so, and it shows scary spots), bad eyes, bad everything that can go bad in human physiology--RAM drops in with the focus and efficiency of Navy Seals and changes lives a weekend of free medical care at a time.

Way beyond inspiring, way beyond disturbing--especially when you think that this is the sort of duty accepted by governments of most developed countries, not left to the charity and organizational genius of people like Stan Brock, RAM's founder.