By Lauren Rutledge | Senior Manager
In the year since Hurricane Melissa battered Haiti and Jamaica, Americares has provided more than $14 million in aid to support the ongoing recovery. Americares work over the past year includes delivering 80 tons of medicine and supplies, supporting repairs to damaged health facilities, operating an emergency medical clinic and providing mental health support and health programs for survivors. The medical aid deliveries included enough medicine to fill over 620,000 prescriptions for hurricane survivors with medical needs in Jamaica and Haiti.
Going forward, Americares will continue to work alongside local partners in Jamaica and Haiti to restore access to health services, strengthen health systems and help to ensure communities are better prepared to face the next storm.
Our Hurricane Melissa Recovery Program will focus on mental health and psychosocial programming to support health workers dealing with stress and burnout as well as water, sanitation and hygiene initiatives and other support in Jamaica. Often, health workers navigate a dual burden of being survivors themselves while also helping their communities recover. Americares mental health experts will help train health care workers in several mental health and psychosocial support areas, including Psychological First Aid, stress management, adolescent mental health awareness, stigma reduction, trauma informed care, self-care strategies and more. The group of health workers that will be trained in Psychological First Aid in Jamaica will also serve as trainers, in turn helping hundreds of health workers across 38 primary care health centers in Trelawny and Hanover parishes, extending the program’s impact to more communities and helping ensure local health workers have the coping skills to continue serving their communities throughout the recovery.
In Haiti, Americares remains committed to working alongside local partners to continue repairing health facilities and public water systems damaged by the hurricane across southern Haiti. The organization will also continue to provide training, educational materials and hygiene supplies to help health workers and communities improve sanitation, prevent the spread of disease and better prepare for future public health and climate related emergencies.
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