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Two Friends and an Ambulance

Posing with the Unimog are Markowitz (left), Reyes (right), and Amelia de la Madrid Paredes (rear), the Red Cross delegate for the State of Puebla, where Tlachichuca is located.

Move an ambulance from Arizona to southern Mexico? Climb 17,000-foot volcanoes? It's all part of the MEX-AMbulance Project started in 1999 by John Markowitz, an operations assistant in the emergency department at DHMC. The bulk of the group's work has been to refurbish a 1960 Mercedes Unimog military truck into a working ambulance, and to transport it from Phoenix, Az., to a Red Cross center in Tlachichuca, Mexico. Markowitz, with the help of many volunteers and organizations across the U.S., has also delivered vehicle parts for the Unimog, stretchers, medical supplies, flap hats and sweaters, and computers and Internet access to Tlachichuca and surrounding mountain villages. Through their efforts, the Red Cross site in Tlachichuca, directed by Dr. Gerardo Reyes, has been named the 23rd Red Cross Site and Ambulance Center in the State of Puebla. Through a partnership with the Solar Oven Society, Markowitz and his team have also delivered 11 solar ovens to families in small villages near Tlachichuca to help them reduce their use of propane, and to an elementary school for teaching purposes. Read more about the MEX-AMbulance Project in the article "From New Hampshire's hills to Mexico's mountains" from the Spring 2010 issue of Dartmouth Medicine.

View video

• Watch a video on the project's 2007 trip to Mexico and the group's climb up Iztaccihuatl, Mexico's third-highest peak.