real life heros

from the local news in the tuesday paper:

Surgery on Sunday: A Lexington-based nonprofit program provides free outpatient surgeries to the working poor without health insurance.

A new survey released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta shows the enormous scope of a very serious problem. In 2005, 41.2 million Americans, or 14 percent of the population, lacked health insurance -- in Indiana, it was 15 percent. While Kentucky isn't among the states cited in the report, Census figures show that 14 percent of Kentuckians, or more than half a million people, lacked health insurance in 2003-2004.

But now there are about 300 doctors, nurses and others volunteering their time for a new charitable effort called Surgery on Sunday that aims to help uninsured, working-poor residents who might not otherwise get care.

Believed to be one of the few of its kind in the nation, the program operates from a HealthSouth outpatient surgery center in Lexington that is otherwise vacant on Sundays. "This is what most of us got into medicine for -- helping someone who otherwise couldn't be helped," said Dr. Andy Moore, the program's founder. "This is just pure joy."

For the full article and ways you can help too, please visit here.