Volunteers bring free clinic to reservation

FORT DUCHESNE, Uintah County — As a 17-year-old living and working in the Amazon basin, Stan Brock found himself in need of a doctor after he was thrown from a horse.

"I had a head-on collision with the side of a corral," Brock said. "I was told, 'The nearest doctor is a 26-day walk away.' "

That incident and others stuck with Brock, now 74. Through the intervening decades, he managed a 4,000-square-mile cattle ranch in South America, co-hosted NBC's "Wild Kingdom" and made what he calls "a few bad movies."

"That is what I call my 'Frivolous Era,' " Brock said.

But he never forgot the lesson he'd learned in the Amazon: People in remote areas of the world have little or no access to basic medical, dental or eye care.

So in 1985, Brock founded the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps, the self-proclaimed "pioneers of no-cost medical care."

"This is what's important," he said, looking around the Ute Indian Tribe gymnasium in Fort Duchesne on Tuesday at the makeshift but well-equipped dental and optometry stations staffed by volunteer medical professionals from around the United States.

Many of the stations were in use, with Remote Area Medical volunteers providing free care to Native American patients from a number of tribes. The clinic, which opened its four-day visit to the Uintah and Ouray Indian Reservation on Sunday, had already treated 285 registered patients by Monday night and performed $123,979 in services at no cost.

"Nobody does this on the scale we do in this country," said Brock, whose group now spends 64 percent of its time working in the United States because of the rising number of people who are uninsured or underinsured.

Florine Sam of Duchesne, a member of the Tohono O'odham Nation, and her husband brought their four children to the clinic on Monday. Delbert Sam was laid off from his job as a diesel mechanic in June, his wife said, which left the family without insurance.

"It wouldn't have been so bad," Florine Sam said, "but they took the last (premium) payment out of his last check, which was $500."

The Sam children — ages 13, 9, 6, and 4 — have been accepted into the state's Child Health Insurance Program, their mother said. The family also qualifies for medical, dental and eye care through the federal Indian Health Service. But being seen at the IHS clinic in Fort Duchesne can be a frustrating experience.

"It takes about a week to two weeks to get an appointment," Sam said. "If you're five minutes late, they cancel your appointment so you have to reschedule."