MOHW partners with PAHO to reform the health system and tackle NCDs

The Pan American Health Organisation and the Ministry of Health and Wellness continue to focus their efforts on reforming and improving healthcare in Belize. Through various programs, the international organisation has continued to do its part in various ways in doing just that. The Minister of Health and Wellness Kevin Bernard explains that he intends to make best efforts to share synergies with PAHO to put in place meaningful healthcare reforms, particularly as the region tackles non-communicable diseases such as cancer and diabetes.

Hon. Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness: “Well one of the things that I think that we have we know that there’s a strategic plan that’s set out by the region but Belize also has it’s health strategic plan PAHO is very instrumental in assisting us with putting together that. I just mentioned a while ago that PAHO has made recommendations in terms of how are we going to reform the health sector and so we’re in the discussion phase. We are working with PAHO as well in terms of how we’re ensuring that there’s one system that will be able to communicate with each other so that’s digitizing records within all regions so that everybody can communicate both from the NHI level to the Ministry level and so forth. So there’s a lot of issues but of course our interest is to ensure that we can tackle those NCDs, we can tackle cancer. I’ve said this before umpteen times on the media and now more promoting it that we have to address cancer in our society. There’s need for a cancer registry, there’s need for us to really bring down the deaths we have had in diabetes. We have seen where young children are now dying because of cancer so how do we prevent that and PAHO will play a very significant role in assisting us in charting that strategic plan forward and assisting us with the support that we need to target and tackle those NCDs that are affecting our community.”