Health initiative signed with Mexico
B.T.L. Park at high noon is not an often used time or place for signing official documents, but today it served just fine as the backdrop for a bi-national health initiative. News 5’s Marion Ali has the details.
Marion Ali, Reporting
Health Minister Jose Coye, and mayors representing the nation’s nine municipalities today signed a symbolic Memorandum of Agreement, marking the strengthening of a clean yard initiative or patio limpio. The effort, supported by the neighbouring state of Quintana Roo, is aimed at controlling the mosquito population that transmits dengue and malaria. The signing took place during the opening of the Third Annual Bi-National Health Week today at the B.T.L. Park in Belize City.
Coye says the document is significant because it not only controls dengue and malaria, but the pest population on a whole.
Jose Coye, Minister of Health
“Of course, attendant to that is also the reduction of the other risks that comes along with a yard that is badly kept. With the rodenticides programme that we have, we can go and kill the rats, but at the end of the day, if the habitat remain, it will be difficult. So the clean yard initiative, while primarily it is to address the dengue threat to us because we are highly vulnerable now; the region around us is already on the alert with dengue, but at the same time it will help with the rats, roaches, and other insects.”
Meanwhile, Vice President of the Mayors Association of Belize, Reynaldo Burgos from Orange Walk, says the respective communities must also play their part in keeping their surroundings clean:
Reynaldo Burgos, Mayor, Orange Walk
“You take out all the tires, all the tins. Anywhere water stays stagnant and the mosquito lays its eggs and then it grows. So I think the patio initiative is to keep your yard clean so the mosquitoes don’t have anywhere to lay their eggs and grow. Then the Councils will be working along with the health departments in their respective districts to do this and to keep the whole town clean.”
Burgos says the Town Councils will conduct clean up campaigns as part of the effort. Marion Ali for News 5.
A manual dealing with HIV. mother to child transmission was also introduced at today’s opening. The manual, a CARICOM initiative, is aimed at health care providers.
