Samaritan’s Purse medical teams are caring for patients in Black River and isolated communities as relief efforts continue after Hurricane Melissa. Other disaster specialists are delivering critical supplies. Please pray.

Latest Updates

• Our Emergency Field Hospital opened Nov. 5 in Black River and has treated hundreds of patients while scores more are receiving care through our mobile medical units working in difficult-to-reach areas of southwest Jamaica.
• We are providing survivors with water, shelter, hygiene items, solar lights, and other supplies. Multiple airlifts have delivered more than 400,000 pounds of relief to the island.
• Many areas remain cut off by severed roads and bridges. Hundreds of thousands of people remain without power.

Our Emergency Field Hospital staff and mobile medical teams are meeting vast need as Jamaicans face days ahead without a working hospital or critical infrastructure. Multiple Samaritan's Purse airlifts so far have carried hundreds of thousands of pounds of emergency aid, and scores of disaster specialists to meet needs in Black River and beyond.

The local hospital in Black River, near where Hurricane Melissa made landfall as a Category 5 storm, was destroyed and nearly every other building was severely damaged. Our Emergency Field Hospital is filling the gap with 30 inpatient beds, plus an operating room, intensive care unit, emergency room, obstetric ward, laboratory, pharmacy, and blood bank.

We are using our helicopters to transport our mobile medical teams to inaccessible areas so we can care for those with no other hope of treatment. Doctors are seeing broken bones and terribly infected wounds that have not been addressed since the hurricane hit. Between these mobile units and our Emergency Field Hospital, we’ve already treated more than 700 patients.

Our community water systems are providing many thousands of gallons of clean water every day and we continue to distribute shelter materials, household water filters, solar lights, hygiene kits, and other supplies to families in need. We are working alongside dozens of local church partners to meet needs and minister to hurting communities in Jesus' Name.

Hurricane Melissa made landfall on Jamaica in the early afternoon, Oct. 28, as a deadly Category 5 storm with sustained winds of 185 mph. The island nation bore the brunt of the catastrophic storm—the most powerful storm on record to ever hit the country—with extreme storm surge, high winds, and torrential rain. This triggered flash flooding and landslides. Thousands of people remain in shelters, and the majority of the island is still without power.

Please be in prayer for all those affected by this major storm—the strongest on the planet this year.

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