And in June, I spent a week in rural southwest Georgia providing free health care to migrant farm workers as a part of my family medicine rotation with the South Georgia Farmworker Health Project.
Did you know that approx 85% of fruits and vegetables produced in the US are still hand-harvested and/or cultivated?
Did you know that there are more than 100,000 migrant and seasonal farm workers in Georgia?
Did you know that the life expectancy of migrant farmworkers is 49 years, compared to the nation’s average of 75 years?The project was started in 1996 by Tom Himelick, an Emory PA, and is a collaborative project between Emory’s Physician Assistant Program, Emory’s Dept of Family and Preventive Medicine, the Southwest Georgia Area Health Education Center and community partners in Valdosta and Bainbridge, GA. Every spring, students (both PA and medical), medical residents, faculty and volunteer interpreters spend two weeks providing free basic health care and routine dental care along with clothes & food donations.
We worked in migrant camps, packing sheds, apartment parking lots, fields, essentially any empty space. Typical clinic setting: 2 lawn chairs, patch of grass in the middle of a field or lot, medical tools in dirt beside chair. End scene.
In its first year, the project served about 100 patients. Fast forward to 2009, over 1700 patients were seen… in over 100 degree weather.
It was a humbling experience and yet another reminder that I love what I’m doing.
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“The hands that feed us are often invisible hands, hands of people who work in the shadows of a multibillion-dollar industry without enjoying its rewards.” – The Human Cost of Food
[originally posted at Emory "The Second Opinion"]
2 comments:
Thank you for the work you are doing.
I grew up as a migrant farmworker, and my parents, who started working as 8-year-old kids, are still harvesting crops.
It's very heartwarming to see that there are people willing to help out those in needs. During my childhood, the only medical attention I ever got was at those free clinics in the labor camps. I know to some it might feel like just an assignment working at the camps, but to those families that need the medical attention, you are heaven-sent.
May God Bless you ten-fold for your kindness.
Ant, I am so proud of you. You are really, really an amazing person- this is great. Keep on doing what you do! Dr. M
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