Dr. Michael Carroll, Transcript Section 6

Community Health Aide Program Project Jukebox

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KAREN: It's pretty amazing that that was only 30 years ago?

DR. CARROLL: 1970. '71, '72.

KAREN: 35 years ago.

DR. CARROLL: Uh-hum (affirmative).

KAREN: And that it's changed a lot.

DR. CARROLL: Oh, the big change, I think, happened with electrification of the villages because that allowed, you know, people to have power in their houses. And at about the same time, the develop of satellite communications.

In 1970, in Tanana, we had only the single-sideband radio, and as I say, some villages would go weeks before we could talk to them because there was no power, because the teachers were gone and schools were shut. Or the way the sunlight was, the shortwave radio bands did not work in that particular locations.

1971, we were lucky enough to have a demonstration project. There was some spare time on one of the old early satellites that we were allowed to become involved with as a demonstration project on the utilization of satellites. And -- and communications for health-related issues.

And so we had a little box that was about the size of your tape recorder and similar to what the, maybe, a single sideband -- not a single sideband, but a CD -- CB radio would be, that we had installed in, I think, 9 of the 20 some villages that Tanana served.

And so we were able to talk to these villages. We had one hour of traffic a day. That's all the time we would get. But we would have consistently an hour where you could be reached.

And -- and it was reliable. It was like talking on the telephone almost, although it was, you know, still off-and-on radio system, but at least you could understand people, you weren't trying to figure out what they said, which sometimes the transmissions were poor quality with the single-sideband radios. And -- and you could get good information from the health aides that we used.

And that was a demonstration project in conjunction with Stanford University that, as I mentioned earlier, was subsequently published as, I think, the first example of satellite communications for use with health care.

And that was wonderful. We had that that year and those villages that had the demonstration project were always available for one hour. And the others struggled with the sideband radios and frequently were not that way.

KAREN: And so did that then expand to the other villages? Obviously, sounds like it was successful --

DR. CARROLL: At the time there was an expansion of -- expansion of telephone communications because the development of satellite television.

So I'm not quite sure when that happened, but I think within the next five years is when the villages started getting consistent telephone communications as they got power.

And when that happened, then instead of a single-sideband radio, the health aides could pick up the telephones at any time during the day and call and say, gee, Mrs. So-and-So is sick with fever and cough and chest pain. I think she's got pneumonia, what should I do.

Whereas before, you know, oftentimes the health aides, if they thought the patient was sick enough to need treatment before the traffic and if they couldn't get -- the single-sideband radios were on all the time, but they were so unreliable that frequently, frequently you -- you know, they couldn't get through.

And so if somebody was really sick and they couldn't get through, maybe they could get to Galena or Fort Yukon, then they could get a plane to come out and pick them up and bring them to Tanana. And that was, you know, kind of the way.

Or maybe the plane would land and the health aide would have to decide, well, this person's too sick for me to try and treat in the village, I'm going to just try and put them on the plane because I can't talk to Tanana and send them in.

So we could always count on two or three or four people showing up about four or five or six o'clock in the evening when the downriver plane would come in from, you know, Nulato and Ruby and places like that with patients that the health aide was worried about and wanted seen by the doctor.