Minister Kevin Bernard Meets with Health Sector Reform Steering Committee

Yesterday Minister Kevin Bernard met with the Health Sector Reform Steering Committee to set out the plans and objectives for addressing health care delivery across Belize. According to Minister Bernard, the committee’s focus includes overseeing the implementation of the Short-term recommendations made from the PAHO Mission report, the development of a Technical Assistance Needs Plan to support the implementation of key recommendations and organizing wide consultation sessions with relevant stakeholders to focus on key areas. 

Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness: “The steering committee comprised of representatives from NHI, representatives from the ministry, we have the BMDA and we’re going to extend an invitation to the Nursing Association so that we have input from every single stakeholder in health that is required. Now it’s a start. We want to ensure and we have set a timeline that by December of this year we want to have that plan in place but while we prepare for the long term plan and have that long term plan in place there are these short term recommendations that through the PAHO mission that was identified that w ant to start to see results and so action taken so subcommittees will be formed to work along with our key stakeholders PAHO being one of them along with representatives from the steering committee so that these recommendations can come to the steering committee and action be taken to implement. So there’s some key functions that I’ve asked the steering committee to do one to ensure that we review those recommendations the short term medium term. In the next two week we’ll meet again to ensure that – we have decided that the methodology is to ensure that we meet face to face because it’s where more robust discussions we can have. The health system is very dynamic. You will always have varying degrees of opinion but we have to ensure that there is the best fit and that best fit should result in the more improved deliver of service to the Belizean people. And so we have this committee that I’ve set up that will work diligently to ensure that we can do the real health sector reform. There are many ways that we’re talking about how the structure will set up, how are we going to manage our regional facilities, how are we going to ensure that we can pool resources to better improve procurement and all of these things are part of how we improve the health sector. Now remember when we talk about health sector reform it’s not just the public system because the private sector has to be part of it and this is the reason why we invited BMDA to be a part of that discussion on how we’re going to ensure that all of that links with the plan that we want to set out.”