When your cardiologist comes to town in a 56-tonne truck — meet the wonderful Dr Rolf Gomes
From a childhood in Kolkata to an ambitious scheme involving trucks, cardiologists and the outback.
When the trucks rumble into outback towns, patients flock from hundreds of kilometres around to visit the cardiologists on board.
Once inside the confines of the 34-wheeler, they are treated to the finest city health experience — stress-testing treadmills, ultrasound, X-ray and, more recently, a CT scanner.
These semi-trailers are the brainchild of engineer-turned-cardiologist Dr Rolf Gomes, founder of Heart of Australia, a service that delivers specialist care to remote communities on the back of a growing fleet of medical trailers.
He not only remortgaged his house to get the first truck on the road, but also oversaw its construction using his engineering background — and still serves as one of the cardiologists on board.
