Word: hoke
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...result was Project Nation-Building, perhaps better called nation-mending, or simply domestic action. By any name, it is a very tentative experiment, essentially a pilot project, but one that so far has gone remarkably well. Since the project's first action teams entered Hoke and Anson counties this January, Special Forces men and various units of the 82nd Airborne Division stationed at Fort Bragg have been quietly engaged there, and more recently in South Carolina and Montana. Their mission may well lead to a new role for the Berets in the Army...
Tolson, at the time commanding general at Bragg, picked the initial two counties for their proximity as well as for their poverty. Immediately south of Bragg, Hoke County has only two doctors (both in private practice) for 16,436 people-compared with a national ratio of 1 to 650-one dentist and a tuberculosis rate four times higher than the state average. More than half its residents are either black or Lumbee Indian. Anson County, some 60 miles to the west, is only slightly better off medically...
...Among the first nation menders into Hoke County were a doctor, Captain George Reavell, and five medics, including Green Beret Master Sergeant Jesse Black, a career soldier with 19 years in the service, including four in Viet Nam. The ground rules were strict: the medics could not act as doctors, even though Special Forces medics are so highly trained that they can perform amputations. All medical equipment was supplied by state, local and private agencies...
...other medics usually remain in the health center assisting Reavell and the clinic's one county-supplied nurse, Black roams the back country roads as a "point man," watching for telltale signs of sickness, lecturing families on how to guard against hookworm, which afflicts some 30% of Hoke's children, and distributing health pamphlets. "I am a rat, I am your enemy, I carry germs that make people sick," begins one. There are others on prenatal care, family planning and hygiene...
Socialized Medicine? Like their counterparts in Hoke, the two medics in Anson County do not prescribe drugs, but assist the nurses in whatever needs to be done-blood tests, immunizations, urinalyses, paper work. The remaining twelve members of the unit work at a variety of different tasks, clearing out clogged, mosquito-infested ditches, repairing dilapidated public buildings and teaching gym classes in the local schools...