Government of Belize Explores Plans for New Hospital in Santa Elena/San Ignacio

The Government of Belize is exploring the possibility of constructing a new hospital in the twin towns of Santa Elena/San Ignacio, Cayo. The Ministry of Health and Wellness believes the San Ignacio Community Hospital has served its time and hopes to conduct a feasibility study for a new facility. According to Minister of Health and Wellness Kevin Bernard, the plans are in line with the government’s plan to overhaul the health sector. This weekend, he explained that there are several projects underway to improve health facilities country-wide.

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness: “We are in the process of now working on that tertiary facility. We are looking at the one, the Belize City Hospital. There is now the study. We’re now already constructing the San Pedro one. But don’t forget that we also have the CABEI program that we are looking at Orange Walk and the Punta Gorda Hospital and we’re also looking at the San Ignacio area, because the San Ignacio Community Hospital, we believe, has now grown itself. So we need to put in a full-fledged hospital there. We are looking at that. So we are going to be starting to do the assessment and the studies for those. However, we have also renovated several polyclinics and clinics across the country. George Town, we are working currently in the plans and design for Hopkins. We just recently launched, I mean, inaugurated and is now operating the Placencia Polyclinic. And the whole issue of healthcare in terms of NHI rollout that has benefited thousands of Belizeans, over 240,000 Belizeans now on NHI, and the coverage of people being able to access these type of services at very minimal cost has great impact. The more we protect our people in the primary care services we’re making sure that we can improve the health of our nation.”

The ministry recently partnered with the Belize Tourism Board to improve the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital’s accident and emergency unit.