Tuesday, May 3, 2011

For Stroke Victims, Every Minute Matters

Jim Fouratt exposes the dangers faced every single day by residents of the Lower West Side of Manhattan : in a healthcare emergency, every minute matters.

Elizabeth Adam, commuity organizer, senior advocate, and health care worker, suffered a stroke on April 1, 2011. Luckily, she was at work in Brooklyn and not at home on West 12th Street in Greenwich Village. At the time of her healthcare emergency, she was 8 minutes away from a hospital. Who knows how long it would have taken if she was at home, where there is now no full-service hospital. None of the 14 URGENT CARE CENTERS on the West Side could have saved her life. She need a full-service hospital. Community activist Jim Fouratt said that this is why we are fighting to get the Rudin Family to take back the O'Toole Building they bought, tear it down, and build their condos there -- so we can restore a full-service hospital with an emergency department and a Level 1 Trauma Center at the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital. This story has a happy ending ... this time.

Brad Hoylman is chair of the Omnibus St. Vincent's committee of Manhattan Community Board 2. Since the illegal closing of St. Vincent's, the community successfully pressured CB2 to pass a resolution that would prevent any change in zoning of the former site of St. Vincent's Hospital. But since then, Mr. Hoylman had done nothing to enforce that resolution, because he is bed with Deputy Mayor Christine Quinn and her rich developer friends. In fact, the Rudin Family, who want to tear down St. Vincent's in order to build more and more luxury condos, has donated approximately $30,000 in disclosed donations to Deputy Mayor Quinn's expected campaign to run for mayor in 2013.

No comments:

Post a Comment