'4-Percent' Participants Receiving Real Boost in Life, Says CMDA Official
by Mary Rettig
September 25, 2006
(AgapePress) - - The director of campus and community ministries for a Christian medical group says their outreach program to help the poor is proving fruitful.Earlier this year, the Christian Medical & Dental Associations (CMDA) introduced the "Four-Percent Solution" -- a program that encourages doctors to give four percent of something, whether it is money or time, to helping the poor receive better medical care. CMDA spokesman Dr. Al Weir says he has heard from physicians across America who are participating, including this one from the Sunshine State.
"I received a message from a doctor in Florida who had, on his own, started a healthcare clinic for the poor," Weir shares. "They now had the volunteers set up, they were seeing hundreds a patients a month and [were] running on total donations and voluntary care."
Weir says he understands the struggles doctors face to give extra time and effort after hard days at work. But he shares what he discovered firsthand while donating his services at a free medical clinic in his area.
"[A]fter I had been there for a while, my energy picked up [and] I began to see the value of these patients -- to see the light in their eyes, their gratitude, the fact that I was helping them when otherwise they would have no help," he says. "And by the end of the evening when it was time to go home, I certainly was energized."
Weir says the CMDA is not keeping exact numbers of the doctors who are participating because of the costs associated with tracking down those participants. Instead, he says, they are using their resources to create models of service for other doctors to use and copy in their own communities.
Mary Rettig, a regular contributor to AgapePress, is a reporter for American Family Radio News, which can be heard online.
