Equal Health for All, including Persons with Diverse Abilities

Kevin Bernard

The opening forum was to see the participation of several ministers of government, including youth and sports, education, human development and health. While several of them could not make it to the opening ceremony, Minister of Health and Wellness Kevin Bernard was there. He says that there must be equal health for all, including persons with diverse abilities.

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health & Wellness

“If you notice on the agenda there are several health matters that are being raised, talking about Special Olympics and persons with diverse abilities and how we as different stakeholders are able to support the Special Olympics; our athletes, but not just athletes, but persons with diverse abilities. And so for me, our presence here means a lot to the organization and as I made that short appeal to Belizeans across the country that we must always try and find ways to support the organization because at the end of the day, it is supporting those persons with diverse abilities. One of the things when you talk about health, it’s access to health, access to adequate services, making sure that facilities are amenable to persons with diverse needs, even access to the facilities itself. And so we are looking at all of these things through the Ministry of Health and as you said, it is equal health for all. We need to ensure that those set of persons are also able to get access without any hindrance. These are the things that we are talking about, how are we able to then, as Ministry of Health, ensure that health services are affordable to those individuals.”