C.D.C. helps M.O.H. to plan for disease outbreaks

Belizeans expect the government to deal with crises in the most efficient manner in cases of national medical emergencies. And to do that, a lot of tedious and meticulous planning must be done. The Pan American Health Organization in conjunction with the Center for Disease Control and the Ministry of Health are working on one such plan. The planning session at PAHO’s office is to determine how the C.D.C. can assist the Ministry of Health financially and technically over the course of the next year. One area that the C.D.C. is supporting the ministry is in risk communication. National Epidemiologist for the Ministry of Health, Ethan Gough, explained what the group hopes to accomplish by the end of Wednesday’s session.

Ethan Gough, National Epidemiologist, MOH
“There is a project that the Ministry of Health is doing with the support of PAHO and the support from the Center of Disease Control and Prevention Headquarters of Central America and Panama. The project is focused on strengthening the Ministry of Health’s capacity for influenza surveillance and rapid response. The surveillance is focused on strengthening the system for early detection of any possible outbreaks and rapid response, meaning going out into the field, implementing strategies for containment at the source, if ever there is an outbreak and doing a field investigation to identify the cause of the outbreak. That in a nutshell is what the project is about. And it also involves building the capacity of the lab to confirm influenza cases, influenza infection or diseases.”

Gough says that for the next two days they will assess what the ministry has in place to deal with outbreaks of influenza. The Ministry of Health and the C.D.C. will evaluate risk communication strategies already in place in the country and elsewhere.