Heart Disease Tops Causes of Death in Belize for 2024, Says Ministry of Health

The Ministry of Health and Wellness says that heart disease was the number one killer of Belizeans last year. According to Director of Health and Wellness, Dr. Melissa Diaz-Musa, non-communicable diseases have consistently been the top five major causes of death for the past five years, with heart disease always ranking high on the list. According to the ministry, lifestyle choices such as diet and cigarette smoking play a major role in all of the major causes of death. Dr. Diaz Musa says the concerns have prompted the ministry to focus on key interventions to raise awareness about risk factors and promote healthy choices to reduce those risk factors.

Dr. Melissa Diaz Musa, Director of Health and Wellness: “In terms of the data that we collect and when we look at the morbidity and mortality data or mortality data continues to show and it hasn’t changed a lot over the last five years maybe just in terms of one or two switches in position but it shows cardiovascular disease as the number one cause of death in our country so heart attacks and enlarged heart all these cardiovascular diseases have factors that contribute to them like our diet, smoking, lack of activity, hypertension, diabetes, obesity. So there are different aspects that contribute to cardiovascular disease, but that remains the number one cause of death in our country. Of course, we then have individual, after the number one cardiovascular, then we have diabetes, cancer, namely cervical cancer, prostate cancer in men and cervical and breast cancer in women as the leading causes of that in terms of the cancer related death. We also have going down further diabetes as one of the causes, kidney disease secondary to hypertension. So these have remained in the top five for the last five years. So we do know where our work needs to focus on. And we do know that we need to ensure that we improve the nutrition, improve the way that our country, our activities, the way that we eat, the exercise, you know every aspect of our life impacts our health. So we’ve got to ensure that we’re able to cause some change behavior when it comes to the practices that we have as a community in order for us to reduce even you being diagnosed with one of the non-communicable diseases. And this is achievable. And we are working in direction to ensure that these numbers go down.”

Last year, the Ministry held training sessions for medical professionals under the Hearts in the Americas initiative, a collaboration with the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) to address cardiovascular disease in the country.