Private hospital opens in W. Landivar
Medical care in Belize has always been a sore point, whether it’s the expense of it all or the lack of quality services. But of late, several private medical groups have made serious investments in new facilities and personnel. Today the team at Universal Health Services joined those ranks as they officially inaugurated their new hospital. The company aims to provide diagnostic, investigative and curative services in areas like paediatrics, orthopaedics, neurology, obstetrics and radiology. During ceremonies this afternoon, Prime Minister Said Musa was among the first to tour the premises. According to the P.M., projects like this one are one more incentive for government to go ahead with National Health Insurance.
Janelle Chanona
“This kind of intensive capital investment, what does it do as far as the N.H.I. project. Does it give it and injection of going forth?”
Prime Minister Said Musa
“It certainly does. It offers more options to the Belizean people in terms of us saving a lot of foreign exchange and having to spend it in Merida or in Guatemala or the United States. And it also allows us in evaluating the cost of N.H.I., when we have this facility available here to determine to what extent we can go in including tertiary care as part of N.H.I. We needed to be sure we have the capacity first to deliver the medical service and the question now for us to work out is how do you afford it, how do we make it available to all our people. Obviously, this has to be done in phases. Not all surgeries we can cover under the first phase of N.H.I.”
Janelle Chanona
“So for now though the programme is on hold?”
Prime Minister Said Musa
“No, no, it’s not on hold, in fact it’s ongoing and we’re about to move into the second phase this month in September, which will be unveiled in a few weeks time by government.”
Dr. Egbert Grinage, Universal Health Services
“Here in Belize today we in the medical profession have long mastered basic challenges of managing illness i.e., primary and secondary health care. But either through bad advice or a leadership vacuum, we have not sought to conquer new worlds in the delivery of health care to our people; we have not taken a step in the direction to make health care in Belize totally self-sufficient. Today’s ceremony and the futuristic plans at Universal Health Services Limited will change all that. Firstly, here at Universal, in selecting our human resource, we have placed priority on qualifications over connections, performance over complacence, excellence over mediocrity and initiative over stagnancy.”
Universal Health Services Medical Arts and Surgicenter is located at the corner of Blue Marlin and Chancellor Street in the West Landivar area of Belize City.
