Six Thousand Get Health Aid Last Week from Adventist Volunteers in San Antonio
From ANN, April 14, 2015: A total of 6,192 people received services during a three-day event in a San Antonio (Texas) stadium last week. Torrential rain on Friday morning did not stop more than 1,700 doctors, dentists, and other volunteers from seeing hundreds more patients as they wrapped up three days of work in a “mega clinic.” Organizers estimated that the free services provided were worth more than $10 million.
“The event was a tremendous success,” Costin Jordache, spokesman for the event, told the Adventist Review. “1,700 Seventh-day Adventist Christians from around North America have just saturated the city of San Antonio with the tangible love of Christ, and have brought hope and healing to over 6,000 of the city’s residents,” Jordache said. “We couldn’t be more thrilled.”
The clinic sought to introduce residents of the Texas city to the Adventist denomination in advance of the General Conference Session that will be held in the same stadium in July. It drew significant local media coverage and an outpouring of warm words from grateful patients and San Antonio Mayor Ivy Taylor.
“Great visit yesterday at Your Best Pathway to Health event currently being held at the Alamodome,” Taylor tweeted a couple hours before the clinic closed on Friday afternoon. During a tour Thursday, Taylor visited with volunteers and spoke with patients standing in a long line snaking around the building.
“I want to thank the Seventh-day Adventist Church for bringing this wonderful resource to our community,” she said in an interview videotaped by the North American Division, a co-organizer of the event. “You can see how many people are here to take advantage of the free healthcare.
Crunching the Numbers
People started lining up at noon Tuesday, well before the free clinic opened at 7 a.m. Wednesday, and hundreds waited outside the next two nights. The mayor had asked that the project see at least 6,000 people in exchange for waiving the usual fee for the use of the stadium.
The volunteer group exceeded expectations by seeing 2,617 people by the time the doors closed at 4 p.m. the first day. A total of 2,025 people went through the second day, and 1,550 the third day, when the clinic operated at 2 p.m. Friday. Surgeons performed a total of 360 surgeries, including 300 simpler ones at the Alamodome and 60 more at the Central Texas Medical Center, a part of Adventist Health System, a co-sponsor of the event.
Your Best Pathway to Health is now gearing up for its third major event in Spokane, Washington. The August 3-4 clinic will coincide with an annual ASI convention that will be held in the city of 200,000 people. Organizers have not determined yet how many people might be served in Spokane. The first free “mega clinic” that the group organized provided nearly 3,000 people with $5.2 million in health services in San Francisco and Oakland, California, in April 2014.
Frustration and Gratitude
Staging the enormous event in San Antonio passed without a hitch, although several people wrote to the Adventist Review to express frustration about the long lines and perceived lapses in communication. “The event was really unfair to people waiting at the dental line,” one person wrote Friday in response to advance coverage of the event. “People wait[ed] hours only to [be] told slots were take[n] up by the other line.”
The waiting lines were divided into two: one for dental and the other for medical care. The dental line was significantly longer on all three days. “Waited in line from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m.,” another person wrote. “It took them a while to inform everyone that they weren’t taking any more patients. … Maybe next year.”
Jordache said volunteers did their best to coordinate the flow of thousands of people and alert those at the end of the lines well before closing time each day that they weren’t likely to receive treatment. Volunteers told those unlikely to get their desired treatment about the services with shorter waiting lists and encouraged people to consider switching to a different line.
Many patients, however, were filled with gratitude, including a 60-year-old woman who wrote to the Adventist Review to offer “a huge thank you. … I needed health care and glasses, and am extremely happy and grateful with the care I received,” said the woman, who gave only her first name, Celia. “I am age 60, have no health insurance & live on very low income now,” she wrote. “I have searched in vain for low cost health care in the area but was unable to find any. Just want you to know your kindness and help is very much appreciated.”
The Adventist News Network (ANN) is the official news service of the Seventh-day Adventist denomination.
