Periodista y educadora. Ha trabajado por los pasados 10 años en prensa escrita, radio, multimedios y de manera independiente como reportera, editora y productora. Su experiencia incluye trabajos para los diarios Primera Hora y El Nuevo Día, la agencia de noticias Inter News Service, el noticiario Hoy en las Noticias de Radio Universidad de Puerto Rico, y el diario digital NotiCel. Además, ha colaborado con Democracy Now!, el blog de activismo contra el acoso callejero Stop Street Harassment y la BBC de Londres. Posee un máster en comunicación y periodismo digital, grado conjunto de la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona y la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, y una maestría en Orientación y Consejería de la Universidad de Puerto Rico. Ha sido alumna de la Fundación Gabriel García Márquez para el Nuevo Periodismo Iberoamericano en Cartagena, Medellín y Bogotá, Colombia. Su trabajo periodístico ha sido reconocido por la Asociación de Periodistas de Puerto Rico y por el Overseas Press Club, Capítulo de Puerto Rico.
La falta de uniformidad entre los municipios que gestionan la prueba de COVID-19 pone de manifiesto la ausencia de un protocolo o guía nacional coordinada desde el Departamento de Salud y plantea la pregunta de si se está dando una recopilación uniforme de los datos de las personas a las que se les hace la prueba.
It took Yahaira Santiago two years to fix the roof that Hurricane María ripped off her home at the La Playa de Ponce sector in the South coast. She had returned home only a few weeks before, when the Jan. 7 earthquake opened the earth in her backyard and left the structure unlivable once again. She didn’t even have time to paint what was built.
That same day, she and her husband, both municipal police officers, sought shelter and then joined the encampment that was built around the art installation that spells Ponce at one of the town’s entrances in the middle of the highway. They returned to their neighborhood after 22 days.
El trauma de quedarse sin techo se repite en los últimos tres años para muchas familias: primero por el huracán María y luego por los terremotos. Algo han aprendido. La ayuda del Gobierno pocas veces ha sido una solución.
The death of a teenager in Vieques whose relatives recounted how she died due to lack of medical services there, unleashed the rage of the residents of Isla Nena a week ago. The Viequenses brought cement blocks to the public square, as a protest art installation of sorts, demanding the construction of a proper hospital to provide health services to the island municipality some nine miles off the East coast of Puerto Rico. A few days later, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), in an effort to neutralize criticism of its bureaucracy, announced the obligation of about $39.5 million for the reconstruction of the Vieques Susana Centeno Family Health Center destroyed by Hurricane María. FEMA has been evaluating this project since October 2018, although as of February of that same year it had already conducted a study that revealed the presence of different types of mold in the installation that represent a health risk for people with compromised immune systems. The study pointed to the need to replace the structure. FEMA, the Central Office of Recovery, Reconstruction and Resiliency (COR3), and the Municipality of Vieques announced last week that they agreed that the project’s estimated cost would be $49,323,985.
El nuevo estimado representa $21 millones menos de lo que inicialmente había estimado el Municipio de Vieques, y se obliga dos años y cuatro meses después del huracán María.
La orden no fue circulada a la prensa y La Fortaleza solo distribuyó información oficial tres días más tarde, ante la insistencia por obtener declaraciones oficiales y claras sobre las nuevas directrices.
An elderly woman who dies from complications from diabetes that has been poorly treated, a young athlete who got hurt and cannot be evaluated with x-rays, a community leader with cancer who has to travel on a dirty cot in the back of a plane because, in Vieques, they cannot tend to complications due to surgery, a sick newborn who is transferred by helicopter in an emergency because there is no equipment on the island municipality to monitor his oxygenation, women who have to plan their deliveries and end up doing c-sections because they can no longer give birth in Vieques. They are all victims of the lack of adequate medical services in Vieques, a municipality nine miles East of the “big island” of Puerto Rico, aggravated after Hurricane María destroyed the only Diagnostic and Treatment Center (CDT, in Spanish), and a maritime transportation system that barely works. Some basic services have been temporarily reestablished in a school that served as a shelter. But the health care needs of the “Viequenses” require a permanent medical facility, better than the one there was two years ago, which was already precarious. The cost of replacing the Vieques CDT destroyed by Hurricane María in September 2017, was estimated at $70 million.
La secuencia de tropiezos burocráticos para el reemplazo del centro de salud incluye el anuncio de información falsa por parte de la Comisionada Residente y la negligencia de FEMA de revertir sus propias decisiones y repetir estudios que ya se habían completado.
