I don’t think many people could read what Dr.Regina Benjamin has accomplished in the rural town of Bayou La Batre, Alabama and not tear up.
Dr.Benjamin gave up lucrative career opportunities only to watch the practice she helped to build with her own hands be destroyed twice by hurricanes-Hurricane Georges in 1998 and Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
She has used her own money, gone without pay, accepts what ever her patients can afford, makes house calls all in in an effort to deliver quality, preventative medical care to the residents of this small rural town.
Nothing stops Dr. Benjamin. Not rain. Not fire. Not money. With a dedicated staff firmly by her side, including 78 year old nurse Nell Stoddard, Benjamin continues to receive numerous accolades and awards for her valiant attempts and successes at providing affordable health care at her family practice clinic, helping others establish rural clinics across the nation when interviewed Benjamin has said that her goal in establishing the clinic was, ” To find a way to provide the best possible medical care to patients who often can’t afford health insurance and the only way to do that was to learn how to run a business efficiently.”
Should Benjamin become the next US Surgeon General and she still maintains the goal of finding ‘a way to provide the best possible medical care to patients who can’t afford health insurance’ you better believe she will have just as big an impact on the nations’ health care system as she’s had on La Batre, Alabama.
