A medical miracle.

• Author: Zerbe, Victoria
• Position: Health care services in Alaska

Those who live in Alaska's large cities, might not be familiar with a land plagued by rabid dogs, bottle rot and honey buckets. But in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, a harsh and isolated world located in western Alaska, these flings are common. Sometimes people there need a little help. Sometimes they get it.

Mix remote Alaskan communities with medical needs greater than the resources usually available, and a military in need of training in harsh and remote environments, and what do you get?

Arctic Care.

For several weeks each year, a medical, logistic and readiness training exercise takes place in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of western Alaska. The joint medical military operation involves both active and reserve components of the Marines, Navy, Air Force and Army, as well as the National Guard.

This year, nearly 200 medical personnel spent two weeks administering free immunizations, school physicals, dental care, well-baby clinics, vision checks, and emergency services to the citizens of Bethel and 10 surrounding villages. The medical teams worked in conjunction with the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation and Public Health Service to augment medical care already available. Under normal circumstances, villagers visit clinics, staffed by health aides.

"We serve 24,000 people out on the Delta and about 20,000 are in reach of getting to Arctic Care in one means or another," said Dr. Joseph Klejka, medical director of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation. "That is what we really try for - to blanket the Delta. We have a good medical system in place. But we just don't have all the resources we would like to have."

After an initial two-year operation in the Kotzebue region of Northwest Alaska, Arctic Care has provided services to the Delta for last two years. Formally invited into the villages by the tribal governments, the armed forces medical personnel during this year's exercise dealt with gunshots wounds, children going into respiratory distress, seizures, heart attacks, acute fractures and drug overdoses.

"The types of diseases we see here are certainly different than the Lower 48: the severe hypothermia, the extreme amount of RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and the TB incidences," said Mary Ann Schaffer, patient...