The unit will provide services to both the Lovelock Paiute Tribe and the Yomba Shoshone Tribe, tribal communities located nearly three hours apart.
Without a mobile clinic, medical staff would make weekly trips in multiple vehicles covering hundreds of miles to provide medical services.
For Cathi Williams-Tuni, chairwoman of the Fallon Paiute Shoshone Tribe, it’s a dream come true.
“It's amazing. It's a vision come true. We have the remote locations at Yomba and Lovelock and sometimes to go out to Lovelock, they always have to take the four by fours, because of the roads. Much of the road is dirt. So when they go out, they have to pack and be able to get out there and back and winters are tough,” Williams-Tuni said.
The mobile clinic will bring immunizations, lab testing, physician and nurse visits, wound care, prescription medicine distribution and education to the people, clinical nurse Joy Schultz said.
“We can say we've actually saved lives; we've saved limbs; we've saved communities from COVID,, and they've educated them on isolation. They educated them on care; they prescribe the medications. It's just something that is indescribable, to have that sort of impact on our patients' lives,” Schultz said.
The new mobile clinic was funded through a $672,950 emergency rural healthcare grant, provided by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
USDA Rural Development Under Secretary Basil Gooden was at the ceremony supporting what he called a great initiative.
“It's vitally important for us to get out of Washington D.C. to come to the area to see what's really going on in the group on the ground. A mobile health clinic. I think that will be phenomenal to change the health outcomes of a lot of individuals in this community,” Gooden said.
The mobile unit offers two separate private clinic rooms, one of which will soon serve as a dental room.
