Volunteers Arrive in Jamaica

Just as Project HOPE volunteers were beginning their mission in Tonga this week, far away in the South Pacific, another set of volunteers have just arrived in Jamaica, in the Caribbean Sea,  for the start of Continuing Promise 2011– a nine country, five- month health education and humanitarian assistance mission aboard the USNS Comfort massive white hospital ship.

HOPE Medical Director, Tracey Kunkel, an operating room nurse from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and retired from the U.S. Navy after 21 years, is on her third mission for Project HOPE.

Nurse Kunkel began her first day of the mission in Jamaica teaching a “Helping Babies Breathe” course to a group of community health aides. These health workers will in turn take the lessons they learn back to their own neighborhoods to teach community midwives and other community health aides, utilizing HOPE’s successful train-the-trainer methodology.

Gary Parrish, M.D., an Emergency Room Physician from Roanoke, Virginia, on his first volunteer mission for Project HOPE, also began his first day ashore in Jamaica treating patients in an arena set up as a health clinic.  Dr. Parrish will be serving aboard the USNS Comfort throughout out most of the five-month Continuing Promise 2011 mission.