The Tulum Red Cross will run a free round of HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis C testing in August, and it is recruiting business owners willing to sit on a council the institution says it needs.
Sandra Amezcua, the branch's administrative subcoordinator, said assembling a council backed by local business people is one of the requirements the organization has to satisfy before it can advance. The call to join is open and has not closed.
What the branch is chasing is a category it used to hold. Regaining delegation status is the stated goal of the reorganization, and the institution links that status directly to how much care it can provide in the municipality. The testing campaign, the volunteer recruitment, and the council all sit inside that same effort.
The Tulum Red Cross wants a council of business owners
The project is being driven by Isabel Menocal, general director for Tulum and Playa del Carmen. Her approach is to strengthen the institution's footing in the municipality by drawing in sectors that do not currently sit at the table, starting with the private sector that employs most of the town.
Business owners are the specific requirement, but they are not the only target. Amezcua said the organization also wants volunteers and ordinary residents involved in its activities, and it wants more people using the services already available at its facility. A branch that nobody walks into is harder to defend as an institution that deserves a larger category.
The Red Cross has not made public how many seats the council needs, what the council would decide, or when it expects the seats to be filled. Those details will determine whether the call attracts commitments or polite interest.
Free tests for HIV, syphilis, and hepatitis C arrive in August
The testing drive runs in coordination with the Quintana Roo Health Ministry, and all three tests are free. Those three infections are routinely screened together in state health campaigns because rapid tests exist for each one, which allows a single session to cover all three without a laboratory.
For a municipality where a large share of the workforce is young, mobile, and often uninsured, a no-cost screening day removes the two barriers that usually stop people: the price and the paperwork. The Red Cross has not yet published the date, the hours, or the exact location within its Tulum facility.
Ambulance rides stay free
The branch runs general medicine consultations Monday through Friday, from 7 a.m. to 11 p.m., a 16-hour window that covers most work shifts in a service town. Each consultation carries a recovery fee of 110 pesos, roughly six dollars.
Amezcua drew a line around that figure. Emergency transfers remain free for anyone who needs immediate attention, she said, and the fee applies only to general medicine appointments. The recovery fee is part of how the institution funds its care model, not a charge attached to the ambulance.
The distinction matters in practice. In a municipality where private ambulance service is expensive and the public network is stretched, the free transfer is the service most residents will actually need at some point, and it is the one the branch is signaling will not change while the rest of the reorganization plays out.
An open call with no deadline attached
Nothing about the call carries a date. There is no published cutoff for joining the council, no number of members announced, and no timetable for when the delegation request would move forward once the seats are filled.
What the institution has said is the sequence: assemble the council, use it to consolidate the local structure, then pursue the recovery of delegation status and the expanded capacity that is supposed to follow. Business participation, volunteers, and community collaboration are described as the pieces that make the first step possible.
Until those names come in, the daily operation stays exactly where it is. The clinic opens at seven and closes at eleven, the ambulances still cost the patient nothing, and the free testing campaign begins sometime in August, on a date the Red Cross has not yet announced.
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