The threat of the deadly disease Ebola is very much on the radar of several Caribbean nations and Jamaica is no exception. Last week, Patrick Jolly, the CEO of Tower Isle Frozen Foods (USA) announced at the Jamaican Consulate General in New York that his company has just purchased 10 Welch Allyn ThermoScan thermometers for use at Jamaican airports, sea ports and hospitals to help boost the island’s preparedness for ebola, in the event that Jamaica has to deal with the crisis.
Tower Isle has also donated 30 boxes of probe covers to accompany the thermometers which will provide a capacity for 6000 temperature checks that can be used at any arrival point on the island- airports, at sea ports as well as at hospitals. The supplies will be shipped to Jamaica later this week.
The announcement was made Tuesday night at the Consul General’s second annual Heritage Awards ceremony where 12 Jamaican community activists from across the northeastern United States were honored for outstanding community service to the Diaspora. Patrick Jolly, who runs one of the largest patty manufacturing companies in the world, was the recipient for the Corporate Citizenship Award for the company’s involvement with The Gift of Life, Inc., an organization that brings children to the USA to do corrective open heart surgeries when the procedure is not available in their home countries.
“Given the potential threat of ebola to the island, Tower Isle Frozen Foods wanted to make a contribution to further strengthen the readiness of Jamaica,” Jolly said. “We learned that this was one area of need so we responded immediately with the donation,” he continued.
The donation for Jamaica is being shipped to the island by Trans Caribe Express Shippers in East Orange, New Jersey. Roydell Rutty, CEO of Trans Caribe was one of the Heritage Awards recipients and when the Ebola support for Jamaica was announced, he immediately volunteered to ship the product at no cost.
Jamaica’s consul general in New York Herman G Lamont thanked Tower Isle for the gift to Jamaica.
