An Interview With the Homeless Doctor
“I was actually really shocked how ill people were on the street. It was like going to a third-world country,” he said. “Young, old, people with mental illness, runaway kids, women (who) fled domestic violence, veterans. And they all have their own story.”
Homelessness costs the medical system a lot of money. Individuals often end up in emergency rooms, and stay there longer, because their illnesses go untreated and can lead to complications.
For 23 years, Withers has been treating the homeless — under bridges, in alleys and along riverbanks.
“We realized that this was something that could be addressed. We could make ‘house calls,’ ” he said. It’s something that Withers’ father, a rural doctor, often did.
. . . I’ve dedicated myself as much as I can to finding anyone, anywhere, who’s interested in doing medical care to their own street people and helping them. Besides just the good that it does and the money that it saves, having street medicine in every community transforms us. We begin to see that we’re all in this together.
It’s something that we should take pride in when we can actually treat people the way we would want to be treated.
Read the article “An Interview With the Homeless Doctor” on cnn.com.
