In rural Alaska, providing health care means overcoming a lot of hurdles. Fickle weather that can leave patients stranded, for one. Also: complicated geography. Many Alaskan villages have no roads connecting them with hospitals or specialists, so people depend on local clinics and a cadre of devoted primary care doctors. I followed one young family physician, Dr. Adam McMahan , on his regular weekly visit to the clinic in the village of Klukwan. It's a speck of a town alongside the Chilkat River in Southeast Alaska, framed by snowy mountains that loom in the distance. The clinic staff drives up to Klukwan twice a week from the bigger town of Haines, 22 miles to the south. On our drive, McMahan points out the clouds of dust blowing off sandbars along the river: "Likely today we'll see somebody with a lung issue because of the sand coming off the river." Klukwan is populated mostly by Alaska Natives of the Tlingit tribe, fewer than 100 people in all, with a few hundred more people in the
↧