Health Min­is­ter Dr Christo­pher Tufton says a field hos­pi­tal is sched­uled to ar­rive with­in the next 24 hours for de­ploy­ment to the town of Black Riv­er in the south­ern parish of St. Eliz­a­beth.

The fa­cil­i­ty will sup­port health­care de­liv­ery in the parish fol­low­ing the im­pact of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa, which caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to the Black Riv­er Hos­pi­tal.

Tufton made the dis­clo­sure on Sat­ur­day dur­ing a press con­fer­ence held at the Min­istry’s Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre. 

He said that work on the fa­cil­i­ty is set to be­gin on Sun­day, with the sup­port of in­ter­na­tion­al hu­man­i­tar­i­an or­gan­i­sa­tion Samar­i­tan’s Purse.

“We’ve done our re­con­nais­sance and iden­ti­fied a site. The team vis­it­ed on Fri­day and we are co­or­di­nat­ing with the Ja­maica De­fence Force (JDF) and oth­er agen­cies of Gov­ern­ment to set up that fa­cil­i­ty,” he added.

Tufton said the field hos­pi­tal will have all the nec­es­sary re­sources to pro­vide crit­i­cal care and op­er­a­tional sup­port to the med­ical team in St. Eliz­a­beth.

“It will come ful­ly equipped with an op­er­at­ing the­atre and oth­er crit­i­cal di­ag­nos­tic equip­ment and some team mem­bers to sup­port the lo­cal team, and there­fore, we are hop­ing that dur­ing the course of this week that St. Eliz­a­beth, and in par­tic­u­lar Black Riv­er, will have a func­tion­al field hos­pi­tal,” he not­ed.

“This is while we as­sess what is hap­pen­ing at the orig­i­nal hos­pi­tal and hope­ful­ly that will bring some lev­el of com­fort de­spite all the oth­er chal­lenges that the area faces,” the Min­is­ter added.

The Min­istry is tar­get­ing the in­stal­la­tion of field hos­pi­tals to sup­port fa­cil­i­ties in the most se­vere­ly im­pact­ed parish­es, with as­sis­tance from the Pan-Amer­i­can Health Or­ga­ni­za­tion (PA­HO).

In ad­di­tion to the Black Riv­er Hos­pi­tal, the oth­ers are Sa­van­na-la-mar in West­more­land; Fal­mouth in Trelawny; Noel Holmes in Hanover; and Corn­wall Re­gion­al in St. James.

Tufton said the Gov­ern­ment has al­ready con­firmed of­fers for field hos­pi­tals from the In­di­an, Cana­di­an and Span­ish gov­ern­ments.

He added that the Min­istry con­tin­ues to work close­ly with na­tion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al part­ners to strength­en health sys­tem re­silience and en­sure con­ti­nu­ity of care in ar­eas af­fect­ed by Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

CMC/jm/kb/2025

KINGSTON, Ja­maica, Nov. 2, CMC –