For Poor Immigrants, An Oasis of Care

[MountainLaurel]

Elias Corraya felt his right side slowly slide into numbness. Hours later, when he could no longer move his right hand, the short, soft-mannered former bank teller in Silver Spring decided to seek help.

Like many uninsured immigrants, he had few options. He was unemployed, so a hospital visit would be too expensive. Language was another obstacle: He worried that in his halting English, he could not adequately explain his symptoms.

After being refused treatment by a doctor, he went to the gold-domed Muslim Community Center on New Hampshire Avenue in Silver Spring, where a clinic run by Muslim physicians delivers health care to the poor with a careful regard for Islamic culture. They spoke Urdu, which he speaks fluently. They treated him with a respect born from ethnic kinship.

And the care was free.

That was how on a recent Sunday afternoon, physician Asif Qadri, a Muslim from Pakistan, helped save Corraya, a Christian from Bangladesh who had suffered a mild stroke.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A42567-2005Apr10.html

The man was having obvious signs of a stroke, and a doctor turned him away?!?! Motherfucker needs to have his medical license revoked, posthaste.

:grr: