14 DAY TRIAL // Impressed by the story of a former homeless man, doctor Jim Withers decided to give as much as he could to help those unfortunate ones living in the streets. He began twenty years ago by dressing as a homeless himself and going into the streets filled with people in need of medical care.
His amazing actions began back in 1992, when his former homeless friend Mike Sallows was telling him about his ways of taking care of the city's homeless. He then asked how he could help and went alongside Mike with a backpack full of medicine and first aid kits, treating the poor people living without a roof over their heads.
He started reading books about the way to approach a homeless person without scaring him / her and dressed like one of them as well. His altruistic journey was appreciated by the community and soon medically prepared students and volunteers started joining him in his cause.
“As a medical educator, if I could find a new classroom where we could be forced to come to grips with people outside the system, for me, that required a complete plunge,” doctor Withers says, according to The Huffington Post.
His story was heard by filmmaker Julie Sokolow who got obsessed with the idea of capturing his work and putting it into a short film, that debuted just last week on NationSwell.
When he first started all this, Withers was just a hospital specialist, and risked his spot in the medical community for his volunteering passion. His colleagues didn't really understand why he would do that, but now they and their children are asking to join the “street doctors” cause.
His night rounds helping the homeless people turned into a nonprofit organization, part of the Pittsburgh Mercy Health System, called Operation Safety Net and was America's first full-time street medicine program. Doctor Withers and his team managed to treat more than 10,000 homeless people and also offered 900 of them with housing and other opportunities.
What started as two men doing night rounds with a backpack of medicine has turned into a nationwide program and has now been developed in more than 90 other countries. Withers believes that a healthy health care system comes from a strong community that also involves the less fortunate ones.
