10.30.2020 FB Live Briefing BHW Mex Consulate

The County of Santa Clara
October 30, 2020
Live Stream - Briefing Live stream
10:00 AM

[Music]

Ricardo Romero Morales: good morning everyone and thank you for tuning in this morning today is Friday, October 30th, and we're here today with the Mexican Consulate. and we're going to be talking about Binational Health Week. today is our last last segment for Binational Health Week. my name is Ricardo Romero Morales, lead public information officer and coordinator of Binational Health Week. but before we get started we're going to be removing our face coverings that way our asl interpreters can understand what we're saying, and so you as well who is watching us right now. so this morning we want to provide you with an update about our current cases here in
Santa Clara County the numbers uh from yesterday are appearing right now under your screen, and you can take a look and where we are we
highly encourage you to continue to practice social distancing, where you face covering, and as well as to remember that outdoors is safer than indoors. all right so we're going to go ahead and get started with our segment, this morning. so this morning, uh we have Alejandra Maria Gabriela Bologna, who is the Consul General of Mexico, here in San Jose. good morning, and thank you for joining us.

AMGB: good morning. thank you for the invitation.

RRM: absolutely so, Binational Health Week, just as a reminder for everybody who's watching today, Binational Health Week is a collective and a partnership with multiple community partners, volunteers, and other federal agencies, and the main purpose is to provide resources and education to our community, especially the Latino community, and the Latinx community who live here in Santa Clara County. Binational Health week takes place in Mexico, the United States, Canada, and other parts of the country, and of the world, so thank you everybody. uh and this year, we're actually celebrating 16 years of Binational Health Week, here in Santa Clara County, and 20 years by internationally between Mexico and the United States, so let's go ahead and get started. Binational health week has been such a great opportunity for us to continue partnering up and working together, to provide services to our community and the cons and the Mexican Consulate here in San Jose has been a long-lasting partner for many many years now, so can you tell us a little bit about the importance of Binational health week, and this partnership and the benefits for our community.

AMGB: Yes, of course.it's uh 20 years ago, born this by national initiative, with the concern of taking more care about this immigration and immigration movement, daily that we have uh in the border between Mexico and the United States, and the need to have more education and working together on health issues, and was born 20 years ago, and with the County of Santa Clara. i'm really glad that has been 16 years working together hard, to give to our community all the information and the services that are essential for them, to know more about the care they need to have about their health. so i'm really glad working with the County of Santa Clara. i want to thank all the efforts that have been done, and also to thank all the different organizations, and the health area that we work with, year by year, each time trying to enforce our activities and having more events for the benefit of our community.

RRM: absolutely. yes, that is a special thanks to all of our community partners. Binational health week will not be possible
without all the support of our community partners community agencies and our volunteers every year, we add more and more new community partners to our list and more volunteers. but talk to us a little bit about COVID-19. so with the pandemic uh i know this year for Binational health week, we had to re-think about the approach and how we were going to plan to reach out to a Latino community here in Santa Clara County. so what was the impact that COVID-19 had at the Mexican Consulate? did it impact the services that you all provide?

AMGB: well it has been a challenge, since uh the beginning of March, when it was the decision of lockdown and while we start reopening activities about the middle of May, how we changed everything also at the Consulate, trying to uh give the essential services that our community needs, so we follow all the uh health dispositions that the county has established. we put also some um protection in the windows that we have for the protection of the community, we have uh we test them with a thermometer every day, the temperature of everyone. also we have um some gel for this infection, and we clean all stations since every every person that has been attended. so we're taking care also with the uh social distance, that we need to take care, but it has been a challenge because we know the need our people has in forgetting their documents, their id, their passport, their matricula consular that are essential documents that they need to move in in the different activities, that they do so it has been a challenge. also during the health week because we we switch in a new way to communicate with our community and it was with the technology that this is the best place for being with a technology development that has silicon valley so we see and we have a lot of seminars webinars and different activities to keep informed our community about the main disease that could affect them and how they can prevent and how they can work with different organizations and community, health organizations, to prevent or be more informed about what they need to do, and in the case of COVID and knowing the importance that we have a lot of essential workers in our community supermarkets but also in fields working uh very hard so we recommend always to do frequently tests also at the consulate we more or less monthly do tests to keep safe our people and to keep safe the community. and during the event of the week, we have flu shots, and we have also some copy tests

RRM: amazing great thank you thank you that is uh an amazing work that you all are doing and thank you for continuing to follow the social distancing protocols and the guidelines and following the health orders that the county has put in place to keep everybody safe and protected. and also thank you for continuing to provide the services to our Latinx community we know that ids passports are essential documents that people need sometimes to go to the doctor, or to do any paperwork or filing anything that they might need to do now in this difficult times so i'm glad to hear that you guys continue to provide those services for our community and i am so pleased to hear that um you are providing also COVID_19 testing uh and flu shots. for all of you who are watching us today, remember that this year is not the year to miss the flu shot with COVID-19 and the flu going around circulating in our community this is the important part of protecting yourself in our community and it is by getting your flu shot. and so tell us a little bit about the activities that you had during the month of October by national health week you mentioned that you had webinars and you also had some of the events that happened at the location which were some testing events and flu shots was there anything else that happened during this month?

AMGB: yes we focus we have different events and webinars and also uh with other organizations trying to get information we know the main disease that our people are affect Latinos are affected blood pressure, diabetes, uh and also well in this case the COVID, so what we did is some webinars focus on hurt the disease the blood pressure the importance of having a good nutrition and the test for COVID, also some interviews with different physicians that they talk about the COVID-19; the importance of getting the test; uh what to do if they are are or think that they are sick and also the importance of getting the flu shot. as to mention it's uh trying to prevent to reinforce our bodies and not get too difficult virus as influenza and at the same time to be that because this could be very uh aggressive to our community. so we keep with all this kind of information we have uh Ventania the salud - window of health, that works daily at the consulate in this time it has been changed it's not in presence but we have a website and through the facebook page of the consulate you can access to get information about any kind of health interest for our community.

RRM: amazing and we do want to share with all of you uh some pictures and some images from this month Binational health week this year as i mentioned earlier this is the 16th year that we're celebrating Binational health week here in Santa Clara county and on your screens right now you will be seeing um something that we put together for all of you to watch. and here we can see that we prioritize the topics for 2020 include COVID-19. access to health care chronic diseases, mental health, and women's health. you can see this is our flyer this is what we put together this year as you can see all of our graphics include a face covering just as a friendly reminder for our community and that is an important step for us to continue to protect one another and we also had it was a bilingual document of a lingual flyer which we had English and Spanish with a Qr code for people to be able to scan and access our calendar of events. back in the october 3rd we had our feria de salud or health fair a virtual health fair that was that we put together with different community partners and where we talked about COVID-19, the emergency department, and the rights of our workers, and and the re the resources and the centers that we have for our Latinx community. here are some images of that health fair that we had we can see that Dr. Cody was also part of our health fair, as well as our Council from Mexico, our president, our president Cindy Chavez from our Board of Supervisors, we had uh people from the ventania de salud, and we had other community partners, who were there and experts to talk about the importance of Binational health week and how to continue to navigate through these difficult times and access services during COVID-19. the following Saturday, we had our CVODI-19 testing site this was in partnership with the Children's Discovery Museum and the Guadalupe River Park Conservancy and other community partners in where we were able to provide COVID-19 testing and flu shots. as you can see here we have some images that day we had 272 COVID-19 tests and we were able to provide flu shots. 131 flu shots and that is thanks to our uh community partner the bay area community health partners, who were able to provide our flu shots uh and also every friday as you can all remember we had our segments for Binational health week both in English and Spanish, so here you see some familiar faces we talked about, anywhere from accessing to health care,how to register to hiv and stds, as well as a Latinas Contra Cancer to control cancer and learning when and how to do a cancer screenings. we also learned about the history of the LGBTQ community. we talked about the California Access a Program (CTAP) and how can people reach out to this program to get resources needed, and today we're talking about, here with the Mexican Consulate and the Mexican Consulate also putting together some events, as you can see we had the proclamation back on October 6th, and this is where the Board of Supervisors here in Santa Clara County acknowledge and recognize October as being the month of Binational health week. and then here, we see some pictures of people getting the flu shot over a la ventanilla de salud or the window of health, over at the Mexican Consulate. and here we see some pictures of our community partners that the Mexican Consulate put together we see the American Heart Association who was also part of this wonderful month of events. And they also provided their own COVID-19 testing and flu shot site in where they were able to provide 84 COVID-19 tests to our community and 58 flu shots. so thank you everybody for making Binational health week a success, regardless of the COVID-19 pandemic that's going on. that did not stop us to continue to provide services to our community, and thank you all to all of our community partners and volunteers and to all of you who were willing to go and reach out to those resources and learn more about how you or someone that you love can get the services. so consul some of the main services that the console that the mexican consulate offers includes passports, la matricula consular, uh but are there any other services that our community perhaps are not aware of? and if so what are those services and how can they access them?

AMGB: yes, we have a lot of different activities and for serving our community we have the main that's using passport and the matricula consular it says a consular id it's the consular registration and we gave them a id identification for that, and we also do for example, the letters for attorney power is when our community our people needs to do some specific trial, or some specific opening an account or selling some properties and they can't be there in that moment, so we use the documents that they can give this attorney to another person this power to another person, so we do that, and also we have the birth certificates; it's for uh makes for us the uh siblings the daughters and sons of Mexicans, they keep or they are Mexicans, but they need to do the birth certificate to have their documents so we also do that process but at the same time we have a protection department so we gave a lot of information and attend our community when they are in a vulnerable situation, we are focused on domestic violence. we help women that are in a specific or delicate situation, and also we attend for example uh when Mexican pass away, we send their uh bodies uh to mexico because it's a very underrated uh ceremony for them to uh gave their desire to go back to mexico and be er er the rest of their lives staying there. so we also uh have different departments, we are this education window, that we have at the community department that it's uh different activities that we have directly with the community, the health window, and also financial windows so we gave uh information our community could navigate it's uh sometimes complicated; it's a cultural difference to understand how to access to education, how to access to the health system, or how to improve their financial uh situation, familiarity or going ahead with another project to become more and predictable uh or business uh people so we gave all this information, and we also have uh a close relationship with the local authorities, and also uh economic and cooperation department, so it's try to make more closed relationship with Mexico and the different counties and cities that are in our jurisdiction.

RRM: amazing i'm still blown away with all of the services that the Mexican Consulate offers i remember at some point my mom lost her birth certificate, and we had to go to the Mexican Consulate to get a copy of her birth certificate, and it was it was super is easy uh it was just paying for the copy and here you go here you have it and that was that was an easy process we thought it was going to be a longer process that will take months but actually we were able to get it done in one day. so thank you and, Consul you were talking about earlier the importance of getting tested, especially for our frontline workers is there a message that you want to put out there to our frontline workers especially to our Latinx or to our Latinos who live here in Santa Clara County and how they can protect themselves?

AMGB: yes of course i think that our community sometimes is concerned and afraid for doing the test because what happens if they get ill if they can lose their job if how they are going to support their families or what they can do dealing or navigating with all these different situations make them become afraid, and sometimes it's an obstacle of going to do frequently test. my recommendation is to do it, because it's better to know on time if they could be infected by the virus and in that if this is the case they can go to different organizations to take care of them or their situation but what is also important is to be isolated and not continue to spread the virus with some, maybe they are also asymptomatic, maybe it's a person that will have no symptoms, but it could uh may be contagious to uh some member or their family and then could be a worse situation so our recommendation is to keep using your mask, washing frequently your hands, getting tests and continue with social distance,

RRM: thank you so much that is a highly important message to our community uh so remember continue to wear your face covering your face mask, keep your distance, uh more than six feet, the more distance the better or the safer and also remember that outdoors is safer than indoors especially as we move into tomorrow which many of you are excited about halloween we know that many of you have traditions of dressing up celebrating with your friends family and i know this year is going to be a little bit different, but let's go ahead and get creative and use that imagination to implement a face covering to your costume, decorate your face covering, decorate your house, if you want to hide some candies around and do like a scavenger hunt for the kids inside the house, that that is highly recommended as well. uh and remember that if you are going to be going uh with people or getting together with people that do not live with you to make sure that this happens outdoors, remember that outdoors is different than indoors and the more distance the better remember to wear your face covering, and for us Latinos we tend to celebrate dia de los muertos, day of the dead, uh are there any recommendations that you want to continue to to give to our community?

AMGB: yes of course i know the importance of the day of the deaths has in our community. it's an ancestral ceremony it was before in the month more or less august of the mexican uh Aztec calendar, and then we sit with the colonization of Spanish and the Catholic celebration of the day of the on november the second it's a really special event in Mexico, because it's a way to commemorate your people that has been or more families members that has been uh anticipate in in in or being dead so what we do or what we can recommend to our community is to switch try to uh take a photo of their altars because it's a set of beautiful altars that we have sender photographs try to do a contest on that also and mask having the Catrinas some designs and you can have also a contest another recommendation is if you want to celebrate do it just with the members and the same house that are living at this time and doing different web sites or using the technology if you want to connect with other members of your family and keep using the mask and the social distance.

RRM: amazing thank you so much for those words and i do want to remind you that here at the public health department at the emergency operations center in collaboration with all of the health officers from the bay area we have put together some guidance around halloween, and you can find that on our website and that website is sccgov.org/cv19halloween. you can also see that website right now, on your screens. and there you will find some tips of how to keep celebrating halloween in a safer manner we do break it down into what is recommended what is a medium risk and high risk, so please do visit that website and make uh the smart decision the decision that can save your life or the life of the life of a loved one. so before we go uh console do you have any last words for our community?

AMGB:  well is um the importance and and i want really to thank again the county and the different partners that we have during this hell week and also the people the community that follow us in the different webinars and at the consulate in the different events that they have for the test and the flu shots. the health is the most precious treasure that we have, so it is important to take care. without no health you can't work and you can't do all your dreams that you are focused on, so continue to taking care about the importance of prevent disease and keep safe in these days we know that is increasing the case of COVID. we know that our community is the most effect because they are essential workers, so uh try to keep safe and here's the Consulate of Mexico anything that you need you can call us you can come to the consulate and we can give you the orientation, information that you will need.

RRM: wonderful thank you so much and thank you everybody for tuning in this morning as a reminder please remember to be safe especially during this weekend around halloween if you continue to practice your social distance of more than six feet then please continue to wear your face covering and continue to wash your hands and get tested we we can we highly encourage you to continue to monitor your health and the health of your loved ones once again thank you so much for tuning in to all this Fridays, during the month of October celebrating Binational health week, and just want to let you know that our facebook lives will be resuming uh next week on Wednesdays and Fridays, and also uh we do have a special Facebook Live today at 1pm and this is regarding voting so please tune in around 1pm, so you can learn more about where to vote, and how to vote safely. thank you, everybody.