In June 2021, ABC students Julia Tao, Ryan Tao, and Vivian Tien accompanied Dr. Tao to Southern Belize to donate medical supplies. Healthcare facilities such as the Independence Poly Clinic and Placencia Health Center have been providing crucial healthcare to Belizean residents, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. ABC wanted to support the clinics' mission by donating N95 masks, surgical masks, face shields, shoe covers, a digital otoscope, and other medical equipment.
July Trip
The ABC East Coast Branch, under the student leadership of Victoria Browder and Evan Ho, did an incredible job accomplishing multiple urgently needed projects: 1. The team brought the following PPE to the Community Health Workers (CHW) under the Ministry of Health, Health Education and Community Participation Bureau (HECOPAB): N95 masks, surgical masks, face shields, lab gowns, gloves, infrared thermometers, digital timers for rapid test swabs, and raincoats. The CHW team are field workers who do COVID swabbing and contact tracing in the communities, as well as perform regular checkups on diabetic, hypertensive, hypercholesterolemic, asthmatic and cancer patients in the field. 2. One of the goals of the ABC team is the eradication of parasites at Tambran, a Mayan village. From a previous research study done by Julia Tao, Natalie Bui and Alexis Chan, the main sources of the parasitic infections were found to be from contaminated water and soil. The ABC East Coast team brought shoes to the villagers, and fundraised for and are currently building a VAT system in order to supply clean water to the entire village. Due to increasing issues with drought in recent years, the villagers are only able to pump ground water for drinking for half of the year; the rest of the year, they must obtain their water from a local muddy river which they also use for washing clothes and for the children to play in. The shoes were donated by Andrew Nguyen from Servite High School. 3. Due to the pandemic and the country's shutdown since March 2020, many villagers lost their jobs as farm workers and were faced with the dilemma of allowing logging companies who had offered to provide jobs into the Mayan areas. ABC East Coast team fundraised for and planted 400 cacao seedlings as an effort to start a green economy in the region to help provide for an alternative sustainable livelihood, as well as 40 mahogany trees to not only act as shade trees for the cacao seedlings but also to help with reforestation and to restore the rapidly decreasing mahogany trees in the area. 4. During the last part of their trip, ABC East Coast team joined ABC's sister non-profit group B-BLUE (b-bluebelize.org) to assist with its mangrove restoration and seaweed farming projects.
August Project
During the resurgence of the world pandemic due to the coronavirus Delta variant, our newly formed ABC Nevada Chapter (under the student leadership of Shenmei Wu and Shenlone Wu) collected boxes of the following personal protective equipment to be donated to frontline workers in Southern Belize and Mayan villages with desperate need: N95 masks, surgical masks, face shields, protective gowns, gloves, hand sanitizers, and rapid Covid-testing kits. Many thanks to the following organizations who donated to this cause: Humanity Health Center, Tzu Chi USA, Las Vegas Post Acute and Rehabilitation , Encompass Health, Torrey Pines Post Acute, Advanced Health Care, Royal Springs Healthcare and Rehabilitation, and Coral Desert Rehabilitation.