B.M.D.A Members Meet to Review Lessons Learned During COVID-19

The Belize Medical and Dental Association today opened its thirty-ninth medical congress at the Best Western Belize Biltmore Plaza Hotel in Belize City. Doctor Fernando Cuellar, an internist at the Belize Medical and Dental Association, was one of the presenters at the event. He focused on what the COVID pandemic taught us and how we ought to prepare for any other public health issue moving forward. But in tandem with the theme, “Improving and Standardizing Healthcare in a Post-Pandemic Era”, President of the association, Doctor Perlita Aldana speaks first on the need for doctors to bring themselves up to speed with continuous medical education now that COVID is fading into the background.

Perlita Aldana

Dr. Perlita Aldana, President, B.M.D.A

“At one point we will come together and have a congress where we can deal with topics that are more related to the way how we practice, the things that we need, the things that affect us. Like how the pandemic directly affected oncological patients and how it affected pediatric care, so there are different little topics that are very interesting.”

Fernando Cuellar

Dr. Fernando Cuellar, Presenter, B.M.D.A. Conference

“What were our strengths, what were our weaknesses, what we can improve on, what we need to change, but we need to do a very formal holistic review and if it takes us up to a couple years to get that completed, so be it but we need to do it so that we put things for the very unfortunate next time, even if the next time takes twenty, thirty years to come along. We need to strengthen of course, the infrastructure in the healthcare system, the hospitals, and definitely we need to strengthen our human resources at all different levels: physicians, nurses, lab technicians, drivers, the whole shebang and we need to do it comprehensively, not only my opinion, Fernando Cuellar, but the whole medical community and those who are involved when it comes to this so that we can plan for the next one.”