• Crossing Bahamas: Melissa is now passing through the Bahamas as a Category 1 hurricane after making landfall in Cuba this morning. Cuba suffered “significant damage” from the storm and around 140,000 people were cut off by rising river levels.
• Deadly storm: More than 20 people died in Haiti, after a river flooded by Melissa burst its banks, the local mayor said. Four bodies were recovered in Jamaica’s badly hit St. Elizabeth Parish, and another three died on the island during storm preparations. One person died in the Dominican Republic.
Officials are urgently asking people in Jamaica to donate blood to help replenish the national supply, which is “critically low.”
Hurricane Melissa “disrupted routine blood collection drives and has slowed the movement of blood and blood products to hospitals,” the country’s Ministry of Health and Wellness said in a statement today.
The shortage could affect people who need transfusions for things like surgery or trauma care, it said.
