Minister Comments on Controversial Ad Aimed at Young People

Michel Chebat

On Wednesday night we told you about the multimedia vaccine campaign by the Ministry of Health and Wellness to get Belizeans to take the jab.  The campaign features a number of advertisements from billboards to TV public service announcements. But did the ministry miss the mark with its video ad? Social media criticism was immediate following the launch of an ad that shows a group of young people showing off their vaccination card to get into a house party.  Many feel the video will encourage those who have been vaccinated to host and attend parties and other forms gathering which are still not currently allowed by law.  Minister of Health Michel Chebat, however, does not see anything wrong with the messaging in that video commercial.

Michel Chebat, Minister of Health & Wellness

“The idea behind the commercial is that we wanted to reach out to the young people who we feel are the ones who are out there and partying and so on. So, the idea was to try to sensitize them to the importance of getting vaccinated and that is the whole concept behind it. As you saw everybody had to present a vaccination card and on every different site the camera panned in on, it reflected a vaccination card and so that was the concept behind it.”