By Phanor Montoya Maya | Executive Director
We did it! We checked the health of corals and the people of San Andres. On the 13 and 14 of November 2020, a team of 24 people, including SCUBA divers, scientists, medical doctors, and marines surveyed 8 reef sites around San Andres island and checked the health of 62 islanders. We had to cancel the last day of the expedition due to the passing of Hurricane Iota. The coral reef health surveys revealed no evidence for the presence of the Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD). However, the scientific team did observe signs of moderate to high coral bleaching, up to 40 meters deep. On the southwest side of the island, there were also signs of physical damage on the reef by Hurricane Eta. In the medical part, the specialists report having treated 62 patients, distributed in the following specializations: - 4 orthopedic - 1 oncology - 3 cardiology - 16dermatology - 16 internal medicine - 1 psychological consultation - 21 pediatrics, including a 17-day-old newborn. 42 women and 20 men. Finally, 27 Covid-19 IgM/IgG tests against SARS - CoV2 were performed. All were negative. This was a success thanks to the joint efforts of Corales de Paz, CORALINA, the San Andres y Providencia Specific Command from the Colombian Army, the Provincial Government, the Colombian Ocean Commission, the Corporation Center of Excellence in Marine Sciences - CEMARIN- and the Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana and our 47 donors. Thanks again for your support and we hope to make this effort again in future occasions.
Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.
If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.