Posted by Bill Sandweg on 13 March 2017.

For all the problems we discuss on this blog, it is important to remember that most of the health care professionals in the United States are caring people and that many of them donate time and money to aid those less fortunate than they.  Here are just a few feel-good stories to remind us of this fact.  There are many, many more physicians and nurses like those I mention here.

Dr. George Bagby was an orthopedic surgeon in Spokane, Washington.  He passed away last December at age 93 after a full life spent helping people.  He served his country in the Korean conflict.  In addition to his good work treating the people of Spokane, and his invention of a number of significant pieces of orthopedic hardware which are still in use today, he regularly traveled to Bangladesh to treat the needy people there.  He raised money and spent over a million dollars of his own money to build a hospital in southwestern Bangladesh.

Dr. M. Babak Rahimi is a cardiologist who practices in the St. Louis, Missouri area.  As a volunteer with World Pediatric Projects, he travels every year to the Caribbean island of Dominica where he screens children for cardiac issues.  When children are identified with a cardiac issue which cannot be treated locally, Dr. Rahimi is sometimes able to have them brought back to St. Louis for treatment there.  World Pediatric Projects has 40 teams of pediatric specialists, doctors and nurses, who travel the world to treat children who have little or no other access to health care.

Dr. Andrew Moore of Lexington, Kentucky takes his Hippocratic oath seriously.  In 2005 he founded Surgery on Sunday, a non-profit organization which arranges for doctors and nurses to provide free surgical services to the uninsured on the third Sunday of every month.  The doctors and nurses perform almost any procedure that can be done in an outpatient facility.

Nurses Jessica Mendez and Lindsey Matthews, who live and work in far Northern Illinois use their spare time to make blankets, which they give to cancer patients at their hospital.  They got the idea when they noticed how many patients complained that chemotherapy made them feel cold.  So far, they have made and given away over 150 blankets.

Thank you to these and the many other doctors, nurses, therapists and others who give of their time to make the world a better place.  We would do well to follow their example.