Servicing Rural Belize District during COVID-19 Pandemic

Melissa Diaz-Musa

Earlier this week, News Five received reports from Crooked Tree Village of staffing issues at its health center. During an interview with the Deputy Regional Health Manager for the Central Health Region, Doctor Melissa Diaz-Musa, we asked her about the struggles of dealing with COVID in rural Belize District.

Dr. Melissa Diaz-Musa, Deputy Regional Health Manager, Central Health Region

“In the entire Belize District we have eleven health facilities, but we do have health centers in many of the rural parts of Belize where we would have a rural health nurse stationed. In Crooked Tree over the last two weeks, the rural health nurse has gone on holiday and now we have a visiting nurse going there once a week. We also have our public health team; they try to go up at least once a week as well to Crooked Tree, in particular. For the other facilities, we do have nurses at the health centers, at the facilities, and at Central Region, we carry out an integrated mobile so we do mobiles every four to six weeks at many different villages. So these are still ongoing on a regular basis. Also, we do have vaccine mobiles. So in addition to the integrated mobile that we do to Maskal, to Double Head Cabbage, Burrell Boom, Crooked Tree, we also do vaccine mobiles as well on separate days where we are trying to target and trying to get as many persons for the COVID-19 vaccine as possible for the uptake to increase in these villages. So you would say that it is almost doubled now going to the villages every week.”