WASHINGTON (VR) – It looks like your normal run-of-the mill suburban doctor’s office replete with framed accolades of the doctor’s accomplishments and pictures of his children and their artwork. The difference is that this office houses the Center for Health and Human Rights, a free clinic based in the Washington DC suburb of Fairfax, Virginia, that provides medical assistance for free to poor people, mainly newly-arrived immigrants from Iran.
It also caters to poor from the US, and immigrants from Africa, India, Turkey, Russia, and other countries, according to Dr. Kavian Milani, its founder.
The clinic is populated with a staff of about 3. A few of them are seated in front of a counter attending to patients that have just walked in while others are scurrying around in the back carrying files and clipboards.
According to the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation, even after the Affordable Care Act is fully implemented in 2024 there will be as many as 31 million nonelderly residents of the United States without health insurance, which is one in nine such residents. The CBO and JCT estimate that 30 percent of that group will be unauthorized immigrants, 20 percent will qualify for Medicaid but choose not to enroll, 5 percent will qualify for Medicaid but will live in a state that chose not to expand the program, and 45 percent will simply choose not to purchase insurance even though they have access to it.
Dr. Milani told Radio VR that “our job [and other clinics like his] is going to be to figure that out, to figure out a system to deliver care to the underprivileged”.
Free and charitable clinics in the U.S. currently provide over 5 million patient visits each year at over 1,200 locations, according to the National Association of Free and Charitable Clinics, an organization based in Alexandria, VA that advocates on behalf of such establishments.
The idea of the center is that at any given time in the US “there is a population of vulnerable people, uninsured, underinsured, between jobs, the working poor that don’t qualify for Medicaid, and the idea was to cover this population somehow”, said Dr. Milani.
Francis Blaise Gonikai, 57, a refugee from the Central African Republic (C.A.R.) who arrived in the U.S. in late January of this year and is a patient at the Center for Health and Human Rights, told Radio VR that he is thankful for the existence of such a clinic. After landing in the U.S. he was not immediately granted access to the government stipend given to people in critical situations such as his and did not know where to go to seek health care without money.
“I was seriously sick and when I’m here [in the US] it’s difficult to find a hospital because most hospitals need insurance, you know, and I don’t have insurance, I don’t have work, I don’t have anything!”, he said.
Gonikai was introduced to the clinic through a friend he is currently living with who knew Dr. Milani on a personal level. Gonikai told his friend that he suffers from diabetes, high blood pressure, and was having a problem with his feet – they were swelling up. Before leaving C.A.R. he was not able to visit a doctor because of the violence.
“I never went to the hospital because it’s closed, you know [because of the] war”, he said.
Dr. Milani told Radio VR that had Gonikai not come to his office “he would have died, frankly.”
“There was a massive medical issue that had been completely missed and he walked in not feeling well, and it took us about a week to figure out what was going on, and thankfully we were able to channel him into a place where he is getting the regular care he needs and the issue is being addressed really fast.”
The Center for Health and Human Rights launched on March 21st, 2013, and has served over 100 people, mainly Iranians but is open to all groups, including low-income Americans.
The center initially reached out to Iranians and Farsi-speaking immigrants because the founder, Dr. Milani, is Iranian-American himself and was able to identify and address the needs of that community. According to The Center for Health and Human Rights, “7.5% of Iranian-Americans report having no health insurance” while “22.4% of Iranian-American families fall under the national poverty threshold”. The center also reports that 7 percent of Iranian-American households are linguistically isolated, which means that no English is spoken in the home.
Dr. Milani said that he identifies with the low-income immigrant community because even though he was born in the US he grew up in Iran. He lived there until he was 18 years old and had to “escape for issues of religious persecution”, he said.
During his first few years in the U.S. he did not have health insurance. “I was myself kind of part of this really vulnerable population. Thankfully, nothing really drastic and bad happened but I could see it, a lot of our patients and a lot of people that are in those shoes are a paycheck away from bankruptcy, a paycheck away from death frankly, of being able to put food on the table”, he said.
That sentiment is reflected by Gonikai, who expressed a deep gratitude for the existence of the clinic after being treated and finding out that his life had been in danger. “I’m old now”, he said. “If this clinic, free clinic cannot do nothing, I die in here in this country.”
The clinic is located at 9401 Lee Highway, Suite 400, Fairfax, Virginia 22031.
You can contact it by calling (703) 489-9966 or emailing iranianfreeclinic@gmail.com
