Nigerian medical volunteers arrive in Belize
They are fresh off the plane and heading soon to a health centre near you. Patrick Jones has the scoop on the latest batch of volunteers reporting for duty in Belize.
The seventeen Nigerian technical cooperation volunteers arrived in the country on Tuesday and are headed straight to their assignments at different health posts around the country. Deputy Director of Health Services Marjorie Joseph Parks says the doctors and nurses are a welcome addition to Belize=s health care system.
Marjorie Joseph-Parks, Deputy Director of Health Services
?They will be working in the hospitals, mainly in the regional hospitals, a few of them will be in the community hospital as well because as you are aware we are very short of health personnel in all categories. So these seventeen volunteers will fill in nicely, they will help us to meet some of the needs of our patients and ensure that all Belizeans have equal access to health.?
They volunteers will spend the next two years working along side local counterparts in healing the sick. Head of the mission Doctor Innocent Vakkai says the group will seek to instil the Belizean people the importance of not getting sick in the first place.
Dr. Innocent Vakkai, Head of Nigerian Delegation
?The major thing is that every person should be conscious about his health, about what he should eat, they should not eat excess salt, because of hypertension. Because of diabetes you should control your sugar intake and once in a while you should come to the hospital for voluntary testing of the blood pressure, and you blood sugar. And so we can detect cases early and we can prevent them from progression into chronic cases.?
Nurse Chinoye Achilefu
?You know some of these diseases like cancer and HIV, when you have early detection and you start on your drugs, you do not have too many complications at the end of the day. So it?s very, very important that they come to the hospital, they take their treatments, the go for check ups at the lab for investigations and all the rest of the things. And to adhere to the medical advice, to the drugs and to whatever they have been told in the hospital.?
Accompanying the delegation to Belize was Nigeria?s high commissioner, stationed in Jamaica, Chief Akintola who told News Five that the Belizean people can be assured that medical professionals are among the best that her country could offer.
Chief O.M. Akintola, Nigerian High Commissioner to Belize
?The president, Chief Olesegun Obasanjo has placed a high premium on these volunteers. And so I was asked to come over with two officers from Kingston and we are also being escorted here by two officers. So it shows that the president is really interested their well being and in their ability to do well here.?
?It only goes to show that we are promoting and enhancing the relations that have existed between the two countries for a number of years. And Nigerian and Belize belong to the African, Pacific and Caribbean group, and the south-south cooperation. So it?s part of assisting a member within the group.?
Marjorie Joseph-Parks
?They are screened in Nigeria, their credentials are forwarded to us here in Belize to the different councils, the medical council, the nursing council and we look at them. They also have years of experience. And in the past we have had excellent performance from the Nigerians. We have had no problems, so I am very confident that Belizeans will receive optimum health care from these personnel.?
Joseph Parks says that a system of regular technical and practical evaluations has been put in place to ensure that there is no room for mediocrity in the exchange programme. Patrick Jones, for News 5.
During the orientation this morning at KHMH, statistics shared with the volunteers showed that there are currently two hundred and five doctors practicing in Belize, or seven point four to every ten thousand potential patients. On the nursing side, there are four hundred and sixty-five nurses, or seventeen to every ten thousand patients.
