Holy Name Press Releases

Hackensack Ambulance Corps Donates Ambulance to Hospital in Haiti

April 28, 2016

An ambulance set to retire from the streets of Hackensack is being pressed into service on mountainous dirt roads in Haiti, thanks to a donation from the Hackensack Volunteer Ambulance Corps and the ongoing volunteer work of Holy Name Medical Center. The vehicle will be the third ambulance at Hopital Sacré Coeur, Holy Name’s sister hospital and the largest private medical center in the northern section of the impoverished country.

Currently, Hopital Sacré Coeur in Milot has 120 beds and serves 250,000 people living in extreme poverty. With financial and volunteer assistance from Holy Name, it has expanded over the last several years to include 25 more exam rooms, a radiology department and an emergency room.

Frequently, many of the Haitian people travel for miles to get to Hopital Sacré Coeur, some leaving to go home only days after surgery because of the shortage of beds. This ambulance will be only the third one at the hospital.

"We are in desperate need of ways to transport some of these patients," said Dr. David Butler, an obstetrician and gynecologist at Holy Name, who has volunteered in Haiti since 1992. "Many will walk 5, 7, 9 miles to get to us and back home since Milot really has no transportation services. We can use this ambulance to transport many of these surgical patients."

Brian Corcoran, the president of the Hackensack Corps, offered the ambulance to Holy Name knowing the work that is being done in the tiny island country. His mother, Kim Baker, is a registered nurse at Holy Name and has been traveling to Haiti to volunteer for nearly 20 years.

"It's a good ambulance, a good piece of equipment," Corcoran said.

In addition to the ambulance, Holy Name is helping the Haitians add resources such as a new clinic for outpatient evaluation services and three new operating rooms while it streamlines operations.

"These expansions are enabling the hospital to provide a vastly upgraded level of service, so visiting and Haitian surgeons can operate much more efficiently than they do today," said Michael Maron, President and CEO of Holy Name. "The long range plan is to build a brand new hospital."

Holy Name has reaped an unexpected boost from staff members who donate their time and expertise in Haiti. The returning volunteers are "much better at what they do here as a result of their time spent in Haiti," Maron said. "A tangential benefit we didn't know about when we got into it."

In 2012, Holy Name Medical Center acquired The Crudem Foundation, Inc., a 501c3 non-profit founded in 1995 and devoted to providing financial, volunteer and medical resources to Hôpital Sacré Coeur. To learn more about supporting Hopital Sacre Coeur, visit www.crudem.org.


L to R - Brian Corcoran, President of the Hackensack Volunteer Ambulance Corps; Michael Maron, President & CEO, Holy Name Medical Center; David Butler, MD, Chairman of the Crudem Foundation, the fundraising arm for the Haiti hospital.