Ambulance Donated to Honduras Hospital

October 4, 2001 - In certain rural villages in the Central American country of Honduras, pregnant women often must walk for miles in the hot sun to get to a hospital. Their trip is about to get a little easier.

On Tuesday, members of the Rotary Club of Nashua West announced the donation of a used ambulance to the Hospital Leonardo Martinez Valenzuela in San Pedro Sula, the country's second largest city.

The donation - which will also include hospital equipment - is part of the ongoing efforts of Rotary's 17-club Honduras Relief Committee, aimed at making a difference in the lives of those devastated two years ago by Hurricane Mitch.

Ken Grabeau, committee chairman, visited the country two years ago to see firsthand how Rotary members could help. "Every time I asked the question what was needed, the response was always the same: 'We need an ambulance,' " Grabeau said. "They have no ambulance whatsoever for this hospital. This hospital serves the poor people. They have no cars. They can't afford taxis. If you are close enough, within three or five miles, you can try to walk." The principal use of the ambulance will be for the maternity ward to get expectant mothers and their children to the hospital safely.

The 1993 ambulance was donated by Rockingham Ambulance, according to Chris Stawasz, the service's executive director. "Ken called me one day and said we'd like to donate an ambulance. I said, 'OK, let me know where you want me to bring it.' It happened just about like that," Stawasz said. The emergency service turns over three or four of its fleet of 18 ambulances per year. Bought new, the ambulance could have cost $75,000 without equipment, but it would not have generated much money as a trade-in, Stawasz said. "In Honduras, it's going to be treated as a gem," Stawasz said.

The Rotary effort began with emergency aid just after the hurricane, when John O'Leary, a Merrimack resident and Rotary member who passed away in May, learned of the hurricane devastation from a co-worker with family in the country. Grabeau later visited the country and went to see the hospitals. He learned of a woman he called Maria who walked 3½ miles to the hospital the day she was to deliver her fifth child. When she reached the hospital, she spent the hours of labor with many other women waiting their turn on hard wooden benches outside. Eight hours after she delivered, with nothing more than an aspirin to ease her pain, Maria walked back home, Grabeau said.

For Grabeau, the biggest horror came in the words a doctor shared with him with help from a translator. Maria was one of the lucky ones, Grabeau said, because she survived the ordeal.

In addition to the ambulance, the Rotary members are donating two complete X-ray machines to the hospital, one from the Veterans Affairs Hospital in Manchester and the other from New England Baptist Hospital in Massachusetts. The lettering on the ambulance was cleaned and redone in Spanish with the help of Gate City Collision Center of Nashua and Merrimack, and Creative Signs in Merrimack.

Grabeau, Stawasz, Mark Piekar-ski of Gate City Collision and Chuck Schweiger of Creative Signs couldn't have been more pleased after Tuesday's Rotary meeting at the Crowne Plaza Hotel to share details of the project, clearly excited to be making a difference. "I've been aware of this need for over two years now," Grabeau said. "To be at the stage where this is finally within weeks at most, days perhaps, of being on its way down there - knowing what it's going to mean to them is the most rewarding feeling."

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This page last updated October 17, 2001