Belize Seeks to Expand Cancer Treatment MOU to Include Women Amid Rising Cases

Amid an uptick in cancer cases among women, the Ministry of Health and Wellness hopes to renew its MOU with Merida’s Hospital Horan to expand the list of beneficiaries.  Currently, the existing MOU caters to children only, but with the oncologist at Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital’s oncologist, declaring an increase in breast and colon cancer cases, the government is seeking to include women for treatment in Merida, Yucatan.  The announcement comes one week after the House Speaker, Valerie Woods, announced her diagnosis of breast cancer. Minister of Health and Wellness Kevin Bernard explained that the efforts are being made to revisit the MOU with Hospital Horan in Merida. 

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness: “We were in Merida myself, the Special Envoy for Families and Children, Mrs. Briceño, along with my CEO and Dr. Musa who travel to Merida to discuss with the hospital Oran a revised MOU which we are seeking and I must thank the Mexican government and the support from the Secretaria de Salud de Merida Yucatan for the support through the hospital in providing continuous care for our young children who are suffering in cancer. While we in Belize the numbers of children are very minimal, I think we are six per year, that six to eight that the doctor was saying, but we are seeing however there’s much more women. I think every year we see a case of about 200 women popping up with breast cancer issues, cervical cancer issues, and so we spoke to them as well to see how we will be able to at some point access radiation services for these women. And so they have said to us that they are going to be looking at assessing their hospital as well because they are expanding a new facility, they are building a new facility. And in that case, when that is completed, then we will be able to probably benefit from that radiation services for other than children for women and adults. And so that’s the goal that we’re trying to achieve. And of course, I wish Speaker Woods all the best in her challenging time. And I know that just like her, there’s many battling the same issue. And like I said, while we see this popping up every year 200 women in Belize with breast cancer issues it is a concern. It’s part of things that we are trying to see how best we can address and that’s one of the reasons why we now provide the HPV vaccines for cervical cancer, to prevent cervical cancer and encourage people to take on that as well. And so now our fight is to ensure how we could eradicate this very dreadful disease at some point.”

Minister Bernard further explained that apart from restructuring the MOU, the ministry has embarked on several projects geared at tackling the root causes of several cancers. 

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness: “Apart from cancer there’s wider NCDs that are affecting our communities and so we have to work very hard. The ministry is working right now on our new health strategy plan for the next 10 years. We’re looking at health care reform to see how we can focus on more integrated services, better integrated services instead of fragmentation that exists in the current system. And so we want to ensure that we look at experiences from other countries. When I went to Chile, we did the study tour there to see how their primary health care system functions in a very more integrated approach. Mexico, our neighbor, just yesterday highlighted that they are now moving away from these separation systems that they had and now integrating their system into one integrated health system. And that’s the approach that my ministry, my technical team have been saying that we need to do. And so, NHI and the Ministry of Health working together in ensuring that there’s one system working to provide the necessary services for people. And investment in healthcare is critical. We invest in healthcare, a healthy population will yield a more productive population. And so that is what the goal of this ministry is. That’s the goal of this government, ensuring that we can continuously invest in the human resource, investing in our infrastructure, improving the quality of life of our citizens. At the end of the day, it boils down to having healthier citizens in our country.”

Bernard added that the ministry would make an official announcement once the agreement is finalized.