Arrangement Made With Merida Hospital to Treat Belizean Children

Now that the fund has grown to three hundred thousand plus dollars, the Belize Cancer Society has established a committee with key partners including pediatricians and representatives from the Karl Heusner Hospital to manage the money. Arrangements are being finalized with a hospital in Merida that already provides treatment to Belizean children afflicted with disease. But the statistics are grim says Doctor Longsworth.

Laura Longsworth

Dr. Laura Longsworth, President, Belize Cancer Society

“We will now…we are already in process. Once we are alerted that we have a child, that child is directed to the hospital; we make all the arrangements and now we do direct transfers of funds for payments. There is a payment plan that has been established, cost of services has been established and now we know how CFAL’s money is going to be spent and how the country’s money is going to be spent. And more importantly it is going to be very important for us to report back to the nation, to Social Security Board, to CFAL to  say guess what…this is what it is costing families to take care of their child who has pediatric cancer. I can’t tell you how many children right off because it is hard since children are sent from all over and we still don’t have that registry in place that can give you statistics. The point is though that children will have cancer; there is nothing they can do about it. They are born with those cancer cells that proliferate. We have quite a number of children that urgently needs care and we have estimated that we will have at least two children being diagnosed every month with cancer. So that’s what we based the estimate in terms of the cost and so on.”