Dear people of Tenerife,
Greetings from Geneva. It is Tedros again.
Our work in Tenerife is done. And it was done with grace.
Last Monday, I stood at the port of Granadilla de Abona and watched the last of the passengers from the MV Hondius board the vehicles that would carry them home. I watched health workers in protective equipment move with calm professionalism. I watched Spanish officials coordinate with quiet precision. And I watched and felt your support and solidarity.
And I thought of the letter I wrote to you just days ago, and how everything that your Spanish Government and the World Health Organization promised came to pass, exactly as described.
More than 120 people from 23 countries have safely disembarked and are now being cared for and monitored by public health professionals while in transit or upon arrival in their home countries. They arrived in fear and uncertainty. They left carrying something they could not have expected to find in Tenerife: the dignity of being cared for by strangers from your community, and people around the world, who chose to help. The risk assessment held. The protocols worked. The corridor held. Science and solidarity operated in coordination, as they must, as they can, when we trust each other.
But I do not want this moment to be remembered only as a logistical success. What happened here in Tenerife was something rarer than competence. It was moral courage, the willingness of an entire island, an entire nation, to say: these are human beings, and we will not turn away from them.