C.E.O. Ramon Figueroa on Semen-Injecting Dentist

John Robert Hall

The story of the semen-injecting dentist who was licensed and ready to commence operations in San Pedro is shocking. Somehow John Robert Hall, an American dentist convicted for assault on seven of his patients, was granted a license by the Belize Medical Council. Not only that, but the license was issued in another name – Robert Bob Hall – even though all identification carried by the dentist was in his proper name. It’s a curious and disturbing slipup by the Council, but nobody on that body, including Chairman George Gough is talking. Today, News Five managed to speak to Ministry of Health C.E.O., Doctor Ramon Figueroa, who told us that while he has been briefed, the Council is the only body responsible for vetting and licensing medical practitioners.

Ramon Figueroa

Dr. Ramon Figueroa, C.E.O., Ministry of Health

“I just need to probably clarify that the Ministry of Health doesn’t function as the actual registrar for professionals. This goes through the Medical Council and the law establishes representation on the Medical council and our Director of Health Services sits on that Council. It’s not really the purview of the Council to license any individual. Of course we are concerned about a situation like this happening and I guess one of the things that we will be doing is sitting down with the Medical Council or asking our Director of Health Services to raise the issue at the Medical Council and find out what exactly went wrong. Why did this happen, and what measures can we put in place, learning from this experience, to ensure that things like this do not happen. I do believe that we need to be a little more stringent on how we go about providing licenses. But again that’s a matter for the Council to sit down and discuss and figure out how best to perform that particular function, because at the end of the day we are licensing professionals to provide service to the population and we have a responsibility to ensure that the people whom we license are qualified and are upstanding professionals that can provide good quality services to the population so we have mutual interests with the Medical Council to ensure that we set in place proper measures and mechanisms so that things like these don’t happen again.”