He is Pittsburgh’s ‘street doctor’ whose office is his backpack and who treats people where they live.
For 22 years, Dr. Jim Withers has been walking under bridges and venturing into abandoned buildings dressed as a homeless man to care for the city’s rough sleepers free-of-charge.
Now, his extraordinary outreach has grown into a national network of medical trainees and volunteers who help the helpless about five-nights-a-week.
‘The first thing that hit me was the number of people squirreled away under bridges and campsites. The level of fear and bitterness towards the medical community and general community hit me full blast,’ Withers told The Huffington Post.
‘As I began to look at the medical issues, I began to realize there were people with bad wounds, unhealed ulcers, cancers and all kinds of things that weren’t being addressed.’
Withers’ incredible labor of love began in 1992 when he was a hospital specialist.
While he had a strong desire to help Pennsylvania’s poor and homeless, the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine graduate lacked the street nous to approach them.
After a long search, he teamed up with a formerly homeless man, Mike Sallows, who helped him build trust with the homeless population.
Dr. Withers still remembers Sallows’ forceful advice: ‘Don’t dress like a doctor and don’t act like a jerk’.
So disguised as homeless men and carrying backpacks with free medicine from drug reps, the duo offered their services.
Their story has been beautifully documented by filmmaker Julie Sokolow, which debuted on the website NationSwell on Thursday.
‘Literally, I started dressing like a homeless person and sneaking out at night with a guy who used to be homeless. As far as why, that had a lot more to do with my concern for the way we treated other people,’ Dr. Withers told The Huffington Post.
‘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.’
Dr. Withers said he initially faced some resistance from his peers who believed he was risking his standing in the medical community for the sake of his vision.
But to the visionary doctor, the need for his services was too great.
He has treated an 85-year-old paranoid man whose legs were so infected, maggots grew inside them; a woman who was diagnosed with cancer several times; and an elderly man who risked losing his eyesight to a treatable condition.
Dr. Withers, a father-of-four, doesn’t need to dress like a homeless man anymore.
He has become a hero on the streets of Pittsburgh, and is welcomed by the city’s struggling population.
With the support of his loving wife Gayathri, who he married in 1984, Dr. Withers estimates he has treated more than 26,000 people since 1992 and has become well-loved in the local community.
Source: Daily Mail
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