Belize Moves Towards Being Malaria-free

Belize has made an application to the World Health Organization for it to be declared a malaria-free country. For the past few days, the Ministry of Health and Wellness has been busy sensitize the public through various awareness activities on the impact of malaria and the need for persons to get tested. This morning, News Five spoke with Nadia Avila, District Supervisor at the Ministry of Health and Wellness.

Nadia Avila

Nadia Avila, District Supervisor, Ministry of Health & Wellness

“Whenever a person is diagnosed with malaria they need to get treatment. I think it’s fourteen days treatment and without that you won’t get better. The purpose of this initiative today is to educate the general public why it is important for us to keep our surroundings clean, get rid of what we don’t want and at the same time we need to study our bodies. If a person is diagnosed with malaria, there are certain symptoms that they are going to have: high fever and chills at certain times and it won’t go.  At a certain time everyday they will have the same symptoms. This awareness is for us to educate the public that there is treatment for malaria and the most important thing is that we are trying to get our country to become malaria free. Throughout the entire country, each district supervisors, along with our chief of operations, Mr. Kim Bautista, we came up with this worldwide malaria elimination day. PAHO and I.D.B., everyone has been working with us, showing us ways and steps on how it can happen. Now the only way it can happen is if certain interventions are being done, for example, we have some R.D.T. testing kits that we need to use. We need to visit the clinics, we need to visit the hospital and we need our field officers to go on the ground to do certain stuff like test for malaria, but pricking your finger is a simple test. Out here if anybody has any of those symptoms, even a fever present or recent, we ask them to just take a little prick test, but it’s more about educating the public today.”