A Health Clinic Grows in Algiers

New Orleans, Louisiana, April 20, 2006 – If you are not aware that New Orleans is in a health care crisis, a quick trip to the city’s Algiers section will quickly remind you. Here sits a health clinic like none other, a health clinic spontaneously designed by the people for the people.
Algiers is one of the few places in New Orleans seemingly unaffected by Katrina. Still, there was need in this particularly poor area of Algiers for medical care once provided by the Emergency Room at Charity Hospital. Eight months after the storm, that hospital remains closed.
Algiers was the first part of the city opened to the public after the storm. But not everybody came back.
Especially not the doctors.
Especially not the doctors who provide community health care for the poor.
In those first days when life returned to the streets of New Orleans, people needed care. Those who took on the gutting of flood-damaged homes needed treatment for everything from cuts to respiration problems caused by breathing the air of mold, destruction and death.
Some simply required treatment for post-traumatic stress. Others had medical conditions that never go away, such as sexually transmitted diseases.
For these noble purposes, the Common Ground Collective was formed. The clinic began as a first-aid station staffed by volunteers that flooded into New Orleans immediately after the storm. The clinic took up residence in a mosque across the street from its present location where founder Malik Rahim was a member.
As medical professionals came into the city, the clinic added more services. As more neighborhoods were re-opened, the clinic’s patient load became heavier. Calls went out to medical schools across the country to send their best and brightest to this oasis within a professionally parched city.
Medical students are still coming. They’re coming from all over the US and from countries around the globe. Local doctors are also starting to come back home and taking up the Common Ground Collective challenge.
The Common Ground clinic begun out of desperation has now taken on permanent status in a small building all its own. The clinic has filed for 501-c (non-profit) status and expects to become a permanent fixture at its Algiers location. The clinic will continue to serve its patients for free and rely on donations to its Web site.