Remote Area Medical Clinic serves 287 patients free

Bon Air United Methodist Church and a group of sponsors brought the RAM (Remote Area Medical) Clinic to Sparta, on Sept. 17 and Sept. 18, at White County High School.

This was the first time an event like this has been held in Sparta and was a huge success. If you are not familiar with the RAM Clinic, they provide free medical, dental and vision care for two days, in different areas. Bon Air UMC thought this was a great program to bring to Sparta for many reasons but, the most important was that in the times we live, things are tough. A lot of people cannot afford dentist visits or vision visits, so this is a great program. We have received a report from the RAM Clinic and here the statistics for the weekend.

For the vision clinic, we provided 112 pair of glasses. The dental clinic extracted 447 teeth, provided 117 fillings, and four cleanings were performed. As far as the medical clinic, we did 28 exams. In total, there were 287 patients across all three areas. We saw patients from 61 area codes in Tennessee. The total dollar amount of care provided was $173,626. We also had 288 volunteers donate their time to work the clinic, which was $107,233 worth of labor. The Tasty Trailer also provided 1,230 meals to the workers.

All in all, this was an awesome event for our community as well as surrounding communities. We would like to thank the following sponsors for their help in bringing this clinic to Sparta: Sparta Drug Center LLC, Edd Rogers Valley Ford, Mark C. King – financial advisor with Edward Jones, Crossville Metal Fabricators, Anderson’s Towing, The Tasty Trailer, Scents and Suds Boutique, Double O Painting, Smoky Mountain Movies, Berta’s Café, Rick Lee State Farm Insurance, LD’s Beauty Emporium, Tri-Star Real Estate, Luna and Son Tire, Stylin’ N Profilin’, Cumberland Physical Therapy, Morgan Furniture, William and Sherry Mitchell, Sue and Ron Settoon, Sparkle City Tanning Salon, Xceed Limitz Screen Printing, Barbara Fryfogle, AFEEA Staffing - Del Toro family, Sparta Heating and Air, Doris Brown - All Occasion Flowers and Gifts, Mayor Jerry Lowery, Shirley’s Coffee Shop, Jared Howard State Farm Insurance, First Horizon Bank.  

Bon Air UMC is already working to bring this back to Sparta, in 2023.