Healing the Sick:

The Goldie Bachmann Luftig Health Center

For the thousands of Jews in the Chicago area who exist at or below the poverty level, costly health insurance is not an option. Often, people are forced to make life-threatening decisions because quality health care is not available to them. Many had lost hope that they would ever be well again—until they came to The ARK. The ARK’s Goldie Bachmann Luftig Health Center treats patients in its medical, dental and eye clinics. Necessary medication is dispensed from our Fred Woods Pharmacy and Gertrude & Harry G. Fins Pharmacy Annex.

Our patients thought they were facing disease alone. Instead, The ARK gives them the security, the expertise, the caring and the support they need to heal and grow stronger.

Medical Clinic

With the help of volunteer physicians, our medical clinic operates five days a week. Medical specialists are available in our clinic to treat those with specific health problems. Procedures that cannot be done in our facility are performed free of charge at area hospitals that have agreed to provide this assistance to The ARK's indigent patients. Clinic volunteer doctors are supplemented by a referral network of volunteer medical specialists outside our clinic.

Dental Clinic

Unfortunately, when poverty overwhelms a person’s life, regular dental care becomes an unaffordable luxury. However, even a small problem, if ignored, can have serious consequences. Our patients suffer from severe pain, malnutrition and dangerous infections. In The ARK’s Minnie & Peter H. Okner, D.D.S., Dental Clinic, volunteer dentists treat their conditions, ease pain and save lives.

Eye Clinic

The ARK operates the only free, full-service eye clinic in the Chicago area—The Judge John & Effie Ziegler Gutknecht Eye Clinic. We treat conditions such as glaucoma and cataracts—saving the vision of many who had thought that their poverty would mean permanent blindness. Volunteer professionals prescribe and fit eyeglasses—restoring sight to patients who have not seen well in years. For hundreds of patients, it is amazing how much brighter the future looks when they can see clearly.

Pharmacy

The ARK's Fred Woods Pharmacy and Gertrude & Harry G. Fins Pharmacy Annex fill as many prescriptions--14,000 a year--as a small retail pharmacy. If not for our pharmacy, many of those prescriptions would never be filled because their cost would be out of reach to those who are poor and without insurance. The majority of our inventory is maintained by donated physicians' samples. Right now, we are in desperate need of a number of vital medications. Can you help?

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