New Operating Theatre for the Corozal Community Hospital

Today, when we spoke to Minister of Health Pablo Marin, we did so at a most auspicious occasion – the opening of a brand-new operating theatre at the Corozal Community Hospital. In the midst of what seems to be excessive bad news for the Ministry of Health, today was like a breath of fresh air after gale force rancid winds. The theatre boasts high quality surgical equipment and while it won’t be staffed by a team of Belizean surgeons just yet…that’s the definite plan. According to Marin, this is a dream come true.

Pablo Marin, Minister of Health

“This is something that I’ve been dreaming of as I enter my position eight years ago….this is one of my dreams and we accomplished it. We did it with funds that we had reserved little by little. As you know, I don’t owe nothing for the operating theatre. It is something that I wanted to prove that sometimes we have contracts that is being so high—sometimes two million, three million [dollars]—and this I did it with much less than that; much, much less than that. And I am happy about this achievement. But this will help the community, the community is growing up. They were always complaining about hearing the ambulance. Now I have the operating theatre, I have teams from Chetumal that I have a good relationship with which will be able to have these teams coming in. We have a lot of teams also coming in from outside…and they normally use the operating theatre in Orange Walk and when they do that, some elective stories is being stopped. So now that won’t happen. Everything that’s coming in for the north from outside will be done here in Corozal. And by next year, I will start to put in the budget for us to start to get the personnel ready for at least one shift here in the hospital.”

Pablo Marin

Reporter

“By next week, you said there will be operations?”

Pablo Marin

“Next two weeks, we have the first ten to twenty surgeries being done here with the Mexican teams. It will only be hernia so it is something that will be fast and it will be done two weeks from now. In about a month from now, there will be a team from the states that will be coming in and also be doing operations here.”

Marin says that this operating theatre meets the American standards and will be setting a benchmark for theatres across the country. The total cost for everything is about a million dollars.