Thanks to aggressive inoculation campaigns, Belize's health authorities have all but eradicated deadly diseases such as polio, and measles.
But while progress has been made, the battle's hardly won, and the effort to snuff out disease continues with a renewed Mumps Measles and Rubella - or MMR - campaign.
Alfonso Noble was on the trail with community outreach nurses today and found full fledged hypodermic terror at a Belize City school - where infant students just weren't buying that pain/gain tradeoff thing.
Alfonso Noble Reporting,
Over the next month the Ministry of Health will be dispensing 66,000 Mumps Measles and Rubella or MMR vaccines countrywide. While the immunization targets three diseases, of most concern to the ministry is Rubella.
Dr. Jose Lopez,
"This campaign that we are promoting is one to prevent and eventually eradicate Rubella from this region. The problem with Rubella is with the pregnant mothers because when they are pregnant and contract it they are a lot defects with the baby. The baby will have all kinds of defects, its difficult to say which ones, but from experience they can born deaf, dumb, blind, heart problems, and kinds of congenital defects so this is what we are trying to prevent."
This the Ministry is doing through their public health nurses who are going to schools and other organizations with high populations to target males."
Dr. Jose Lopez,
"We trying to prevent those things from happening again and therefore we are targeting specifically the males because they can get it and pass it on to the mothers. So we are targeting males from age 5 to age 35 years old in this campaign right now. Right now for the country its 66,000 people and the Belize district it is about 18,000 men we want to vaccinate. We are going to the schools, to the workplace, and in all our health centers we are encouraging as much people as possible to come and get their vaccination. We are trying to get 100% coverage to make sure it doesn't occur"
The vaccine is free of cost and as I found out, it is painless [Alfonso getting MRR vaccine].
And while it was MMR vaccines in classrooms, the department of health also observed world tuberculosis day. Under the theme "every breath counts - stop TB now." The national tuberculosis program today educated the public on what TB is and how it can be prevented. Doctor Inez Mendez Moguel, the national TB program coordinator told us more.
Dr. Inez Mendez-Moguel,
"TB is a bacteria, it's an infectious disease and its very contagious. 90 to 95 percent of the case the patient catches in the lung however it just doesn't stay there as it can also spread to the skin. Right now we have two patients being treated for that and we have two patients with TB of the kidney. So it's a disease that can affect the entire body."
"We just wanted to come and tell the people about TB, how they can get it, which people are at risk and also how you can prevent because its preventable and its also curable. 2 years ago we had 121 people treated countrywide for TB so you can the numbers are important."
The TB observance takes place worldwide every year.
7NEWS produced for broadcast by News Director Jules Vasquez
Edited for the internet by Keith Swift