NEW ORLEANS — Rachel Kingston walked past a pair of growling white Bengal tigers, ducked into a plastic tent and slipped into a dental exam chair. Her hand gingerly cupping her cheek, Kingston described to the dentist how her tooth had been aching since Hurricane Katrina.
Steps away, scores of other cavity-plagued residents lined up in front of a dental X-ray machine while a bear cub slept in a nearby tree. Down the road, next to a rhinoceros playfully digging in the dirt, women in a temporary exam room placed their heels into medical stirrups for Pap smears.
The thousands of people who have gathered this week at the Audubon Zoo are not here to see the wildlife -- but to obtain medical care. The 58-acre zoo, about five miles southwest of the French Quarter, was the only site in New Orleans large enough to accommodate the weeklong free clinic.
At least 500 doctors, nurses and other medical professionals volunteered to staff the clinic, which is a temporary measure to help address the medical care crisis that has followed hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Seven of the city's 16 hospitals are closed; scores of medical and dental offices were destroyed. Thousands of doctors, with no place to practice and their homes destroyed have, like so many others, left the area.
The hurricanes have caused the largest migration of doctors in the U.S. since World War II, when medical workers were drawn into military service, according to research at the University of North Carolina's Southeast Regional Center for Health Workforce Studies.
The zoo clinic was organized by the City of New Orleans Department of Health and the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps, a Tennessee-based nonprofit that helps bring free medical services to areas in crisis.
Some volunteers came from the New Orleans region; others traveled from across the country, including dentists from California, optometrists from Kansas and obstetricians from Delaware.
The clinic, which opened Monday morning, was visited by about 5,000 people by the end of Thursday, said Stan Brock, founder and director of the Remote Area Medical Volunteer Corps.
Thousands more are expected to be treated before the clinic closes on Sunday, said Brock, who was a co-star of the TV series "Wild Kingdom."
Word of the free clinic quickly spread throughout the region, and hurricane-ravaged families arrived from as far as Mississippi and Texas.
