M.O.H.W. Addresses Shortage of Medication and Medical Supplies in Hospitals

As for the complaint made by nurses about a lack of medication and medical supplies, Minister Bernard says government is working to improve the function of the Central Medical Service (C.M.S.). Additionally, Minister Bernard noted that suppliers have already been called on to ensure that deliveries are made to the C.M.S. in a timely manner.

Kevin Bernard

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness

“There is many other issues that have been raised. One of them has to do with the main problem as well, lack of communication, lack of medical supplies, in some instances they have mentioned that in some areas they did not have gauze. But, let me also say this too, members of the media, there is also a human factor when it comes to making sure that your inventory list or requisition is sent in on time. We recently conducted the tender process as you are aware, where contracts were issued to various suppliers and we have made the call out to these suppliers in the past week to make sure that these deliveries can come in on a timely basis. That discussion was also had with the Nursing Association of Belize last week Monday where we made assurances that by the end of September we should stabilize those issues and regions and various facilitates should be getting medication and medical supplies on a timely manner. We are also looking at the internal procedures in terms of how people make request to the Central Medical Store and how timely that delivery is being done back to the regions. So, those are things we have been putting in place, in order to improve the delivery of this type of service that we offer our people.”