Luanne Freer, M.D. opened the world’s highest medical clinic in 2003, at Mount Everest Base Camp. Located at 17,600 feet (5,350 meters), the tent-based clinic provides medical care for ailments such as high altitude sickness, frostbite, snow blindness, and trauma to climbers, Sherpas and trekkers. Dr. Freer shares her fascinating story of what it is like to provide medical care in one of the world’s coldest and most austere environments. For 8 weeks twice a year, every year for decades, an international community springs up on the side of a mountain. It’s Everest Base Camp, and for the first time in history it now has its own hospital. The American College of Emergency Physicians has recognized Luanne Freer, MD, as a “Hero of Emergency Medicine.” This distinction recognizes emergency physicians who have made significant contributions to emergency medicine, their communities and their patients.
Dr. Freer is a board certified emergency physician who practices as the medical director for Yellowstone National Park, and is the past president of the Wilderness Medical Society. In 2003, she set up the first-ever medical clinic at Mt. Everest base camp and continues to return to volunteer and direct the clinic in Nepal every spring. She updates her experiences on Everest via her website, where she also provides public education and advice about travel and health at altitude.
Dr. Freer is no ordinary E.R. doctor; starting as a nurse and then obtaining her medical degree, she is also an experienced broadcast medical reporter. Her work on Everest now makes her one of the world’s foremost experts on high-altitude medicine and is highlighted in several documentary films, chronicling life and death adventures as she faces high-altitude medical emergencies, helicopter evacuations, sudden violent storms, gender discrimination, multinational cultures and poverty while operating the first and only emergency room on the world’s highest mountain.