CARPHA hands over public health supplies to Jamaica

The Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (CARPHA) hand­ed over pub­lic health re­lief sup­plies to the Gov­ern­ment of Ja­maica fol­low­ing the im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa in Oc­to­ber 2025.

CARPHA do­nat­ed more than US$700,000 in pub­lic health and emer­gency sup­plies to the Min­istry of Health and Well­ness. The sup­port was pro­vid­ed through CARPHA’s Pan­dem­ic Fund and fund­ing from the UK Health Se­cu­ri­ty Agency with sup­port from the Unit­ed King­dom Gov­ern­ment.

CARPHA Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Lisa In­dar joined a mis­sion with the Caribbean Dis­as­ter Emer­gency Man­age­ment Agency with­in two days af­ter the hur­ri­cane. Of­fi­cials met with the Prime Min­is­ter of Ja­maica and Min­is­ter of Health to dis­cuss re­sponse mea­sures.

CARPHA al­so de­ployed teams and sup­plies through the Re­gion­al Re­sponse Mech­a­nism and sup­port­ed op­er­a­tions through the Bar­ba­dos De­fence Force field hos­pi­tal.

The agency pro­vid­ed two Mol­bio Qua­tro PCR point-of-care in­stru­ments and de­ployed lab­o­ra­to­ry per­son­nel with­in 48 hours. The equip­ment sup­port­ed test­ing for lep­tospiro­sis and oth­er ill­ness­es af­ter the hur­ri­cane. The in­stru­ments re­main in Ja­maica and 19 lab­o­ra­to­ry per­son­nel re­ceived train­ing.

Af­ter the hur­ri­cane, of­fi­cials re­port­ed dis­rup­tion to wa­ter and san­i­ta­tion sys­tems, food sup­ply is­sues, in­creased mos­qui­to breed­ing and dam­age to health fa­cil­i­ties. Of­fi­cials al­so not­ed risks of gas­troen­teri­tis, dengue, lep­tospiro­sis, res­pi­ra­to­ry in­fec­tions and in­juries.

CARPHA sup­plied di­ag­nos­tic test­ing kits, per­son­al pro­tec­tive equip­ment, wa­ter and food safe­ty mon­i­tor­ing tools, san­i­ta­tion ma­te­ri­als, sur­veil­lance tools and vec­tor con­trol sup­plies.

De­liv­er­ies be­gan in No­vem­ber 2025 and con­tin­ue. Clear­ance and dis­tri­b­u­tion were sup­port­ed by the Na­tion­al Health­care En­hance­ment Foun­da­tion. Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor Court­ney Cephas at­tend­ed the cer­e­mo­ny.

A han­dover cer­e­mo­ny took place on March 9 at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in Kingston. Ja­maica Min­is­ter of Health and Well­ness Christo­pher Tufton at­tend­ed with Per­ma­nent Sec­re­tary Er­rol Greene, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Jacquiline Bisas­or-McKen­zie and CARPHA Se­nior Tech­ni­cal Ad­vi­sor Mo­hamed Elsherbiny.

Min­is­ter Tufton thanked CARPHA for the sup­port.

Dr In­dar said CARPHA will con­tin­ue work with Ja­maica and re­gion­al part­ners on re­cov­ery and lab­o­ra­to­ry ca­pac­i­ty. Dis­cus­sions al­so ad­dressed an­timi­cro­bial re­sis­tance test­ing and na­tion­al lab­o­ra­to­ry sup­port.