The people of Alabama’s Black Belt are in danger.

The danger is just as real as if they were caught on a runaway rail car and hurtling towards a deep abyss.

But diabetes, heart disease, Sickle Cell Anemia and obesity grab fewer headlines and don’t raise much of a national clamor.

All that is about to change, according to Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. who has made health care a top priority in his second term of office.

“I’ve simply made health a priority issue. If I didn’t I’d be negligent,” Perkins said. “There are a lot of people by Jubilee weekend I think that are going to be really surprised how substantial this issue is a the national level.”

Part of the cure, according to Perkins will be ProHealth Selma’s involvement in restoring the Good Samaritan Hospital.

Run by Dr. Ray White, of Franklin, Tenn., ProHealth Selma gave the City Council a plan Monday that outlined some of their goals to eliminate the health care disparity in the Black Belt.

“Our whole purpose of being is to make sure people have access and we eliminate health disparity,” White said.

ProHealth Selma’s parent non-profit company is ProHealth Rural Services, a Tennessee organization recently honored by the State of Tennessee General Assembly for service to the people of Tennessee.

ProHealth Selma Inc. is not a new organization.

Rather, White’s ProHealth took over the former Mid-Town Clinic Inc., with was a federally qualified health Center started in Sept. of 1996.

ProHealth assumed Mid-Town’s role and changed the name.

“That’s all it is, a name change,” White explained at the meeting.

As of Jan. 2, 2005, the project will become the Good Samaritan Community Health Center by assuming care of primary care patients of the existing general practice.

According to the project abstract provided by White, the facility will initially have two medical providers as it works to become the safety net provider for all of Dallas County.

At full operation it will have five medical providers, two dental providers and three mental health/substance abuse providers.

The 10 health providers are projected to service a combined 7,000 patients a year.

“There are a lot of people that want to help, that have tried to help us,” White said. “There are a lot of things going on now. There’s a lot of healthcare that’s being done but it comes out multi-disciplinary, basically meaning each one of you did something but nobody talked to the poor little patient in the middle, the one’s least able to afford that type of care.”

The key, according to the abstract, is to get healthcare to a segment of the population in desperate need.

“In the proposed project, we are addressing the absence of a community health center in a county that is 63.6 percent African American and has 31.1 percent living below the poverty level,” it reads. “We are addressing the lack of comprehensive services that include interdisciplinary treatment plans to address health disparities.”

Now, the city leaders must work through the project and try to come to an accord that benefits the city in all aspects, financially, historically and medically.

“I just ask everyone to be patient and allow the city to work through it,” City Council President George Evans said. “Hopefully, we’ll get the

correct answers and assurances that whatever happens the city won’t go into debt.”