Wilfrid Desir

Wilfrid Désir was born on September 3, 1932, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Wilfrid attended the esteemed primary and secondary school, St. Louis de Gonzague, where he consistently excelled as one of the top students in his class. Entry into Haiti's medical school was very competitive but, having scored high on the entrance exam, Wilfrid was among the few to be accepted. Upon graduation, Wilfrid undertook the required rural residency in Dame Marie, Haiti. During this time, he faced some of his most difficult medical cases, as access to modern medical treatment was hard to come by. However, this time doing his rural residency brought him back to the reason he embarked on medicine initially: it was watching his grandmother combine various roots and herbs to treat family members that originally ignited his interest in caring for and treating others.

While in Dame Marie, Haiti, Wilfrid met and married his first wife, Olguita Joseph, with whom he fathered three girls: Dowoti Désir-Davis, Nadine and Marjorie Désir. In 1959, amidst political troubles in Haiti and with the promise of a better future for himself and his family, Dr. Désir immigrated to New York to begin training in Pulmonary Diseases and Nephrology at Bronx-Lebanon Hospita...