MOTIVATED by the strain Hurricane Melissa placed on Jamaica’s health sector, the Kiwanis Club of downtown Kingston has facilitated a donation estimated at
about $30 million, providing three hospitals across the Corporate Area with a major boost to their medical services.

Philip Clarke, president of the service club, told the Jamaica Observer on Friday that the donation ballooned far beyond what the organisation first imagined, noting that the project began with a single request from St Joseph’s Hospital for an echocardiogram machine costing $1 million, which expanded to also benefit the Kingston Public Hospital (KPH), and Victoria Jubilee Hospital.

“It really began out of Hurricane Melissa’s [October 2025] impact on the health sector. I’m in contact with the people from the Memorial Healthcare System [Florida, United States] and we partnered to see how we could assist with relief efforts. So it was a collaborative effort to do our part in helping to ease some of the discomfort that the hospitals were facing and the massive cost associated with these items,” said Clarke.

According to him, through collaboration with the Memorial Healthcare System and Food for the Poor, the club was able to secure several machines, many of them donated at no cost. Additional items including gloves, wipes, paediatric socks, IV stands, diapers, and mobility aids, also formed part of the shipment.

Clarke added that institutions outside of the three main hospitals also benefited, with the Kiwanis Club supplying scrubs to the Bustamante Hospital for Children and clothing items to the Golden Age Home for the elderly.

“It was just a really good experience. It took a couple of months to materialise and I was wondering if it was going to still happen but we got the call that the container [with the supplies] arrived and it took another month to clear. But Food for the Poor played a very key role in helping us to get the stuff in a timely manner. So, we thank them as well for the role that they played because we couldn’t do it on our own,” said Clarke.

He admitted that the final scale of the donation stunned even the organising team, noting that they were overjoyed at being able to provide relief and support to several medical institutions.

“It’s way more than we bargained for because as I said, it started off with a million-dollar request and it turned out into close to $30 million, where we are at now, in terms of the value of the donations. So I am exceedingly happy that we could have been able to facilitate this,“ he said.

Clarke reiterated that the Kiwanis Club strongly believed in the work of collaboration and noted that they intended to start on other key projects that would further assist the country’s healthcare system.

“We’re actually in negotiation to see if we can donate an ambulance to St Joseph’s Hospital. It’s a hefty price tag, but we didn’t think we could do this, but we did it. So I think we will be able to do that hopefully before the year ends, because we know how life-saving an ambulance can be. We have realised the gaps and we’re working with St Joseph’s and KPH to hopefully fill those that they have identified based on our recent visit to them. As significant as this is, it’s still a drop in the bucket. So we want to keep this momentum going,” he said.