The doctor is in. But Dr. Rick Hodes isn't running a private clinic. Instead, the American specialist is working among some 300 thousand people stranded on the Albanian border.
Hodes has plenty of experience practicing under such conditions.
Hodes and Manlio Dell'Ariccia, the JDC's country director for Albania, headed straight to the Refugee Sorting Center on the Albanian border, where 300,000 are camped. After surveying the supply centers in Tirana, Hodes noted that there was plenty of food, medicine, clothing and blankets in storage. The problem, he says, is distribution. Right now, there is no organized means of efficiently managing the process of getting these necessities to the people who need them. Hodes and Dell'Ariccia met with Tirana's Mayor Albert Brojka and representatives of other non-governmental organizations in the field, to pool information and organize efforts to manage the relief efforts that are converging on this border site.