All night vigil for threatened Interfaith Medical Center
Rev. Daughtry: ‘Don’t let hospital closings be your legacy.’
Interfaith Medical Center supporters, the faithful and members of the New York State Nurses Association and 1199SEIU held an all-night candlelight vigil Sunday to bring attention to the imminent closure of the only hospital serving residents of Bedford-Stuyvesant and Crown Heights.
Rev. Herbert Daughtry of the House of the Lord Church, age 82, challenged the younger members of his congregation to keep up with him as he sang, chanted and marched for the hospital. Rev. Daughtry called Interfaith crucial and its planned closure a public health emergency.
“Interfaith is important because it provides services to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights and even Brownsville, since St. Mary’s closed,” he told the Brooklyn Eagle on Monday. “In case of an emergency it will take much longer – the next hospital is two, three miles away. In that time a person could die, or at least their condition would worsen. You’re dealing with life and death issues. What is incomprehensible is we’re closing hospitals in communities that everyone agrees are in desperate need for quality medical services.”