Medical Relief Foundation

Mission

The Medical Relief Foundation's health improvement project in Jamaica, West Indies, consists of both specific short-term goals as well as a long-term vision for comprehensive healthcare improvement. While the country of Jamaica offers its citizens universal healthcare, the public health system infrastructure is presently very fiscally limited due to a restricted national budget and a limited average income. Pre-hospital Emergency Medical Services (EMS) in Jamaica lags decades behind many other countries in the hemisphere.

Until the involvement of the Medical Relief Foundation, the EMTs working on the Jamaica Fire Brigade ambulances did not even have Automatic External Defibrillators (AEDs) to treat victims of cardiac arrest, despite the prolonged response times to many hospitals. Many parts of the country have no ambulance service at all, and the Jamaica Fire Brigade ambulances which do exist have profound difficulty replacing even basic EMS supplies.