Hagley Gap, Jamaica

Hagley Gap is a community 30 miles inland from Kingston, in the Blue Mountains. Most villagers work in subsistence farming harvesting coffee or sugarcane. In this area, clean water is not available and travel to medical care takes several hours and is prohibitively expensive.

NU-AID has partnered with the Blue Mountain Project (BMP), an American and Jamaican registered non-governmental organization that works with communities to provide improvements in health, education and environment in rural, poor areas. BMP serves a population of 3,000 people who have no access to doctors or quality health care. However, the infrastructure is there: a medical clinic, constructed by volunteers, opened its doors in June, 2006. This clinic is staffed two days each week by a Jamaican nurse, and NU-AID members will work out of this clinic during their visits. Another clinic site will be set up in a school farther up the mountain in an extremely remote area known as Penn-Lyne. Home visits for community members who are bedridden will also be conducted. The most urgent health issues in Hagley Gap are skin infections, uncontrolled and undiagnosed hypertension, malnutrition, parasitic infections, STDs, upper respiratory infections, and diabetes. The community is in need of public health information on topics such as oral hygiene, STDs, wound care, basic human anatomy and nutrition.