The Ministry of Health today handed over 5 ambulances to the Northern, Southern and Western Regional Hospitals as well as the community hospitals in San Ignacio and Corozal Towns. The vehicles are 2006 Toyota 3 door vans that come fully equipped with on-board medical equipment for transfer of patients. At the handing over, Minister of Health Joe Coye explains that the equipment is part of a larger health sector reform project that is changing the focus to the delivery of healthcare.
Hon. Joe Coye, Minister of Health
"We will never be able, no country will be able to afford to deal with the chronic diseases, whether your heart attacks, your hypertension, your strokes, cancers, the asthma, the diabetes. So we will never be able to afford to cope with that. The only way we can deal with it in a cost effective way is to through the preventive strategy. So you will never be able to have enough curative interventions facilities to deal with unless you begin to prevent it and that is why we are strengthening now the primary care, we are strengthening the community based care, and we are going to strengthen the health programs, the HECOPAB program for example, the NDACC programs, the drug reduction, obviously we are going to ensure that in this Ministry also that resources are being put to better use; we get more bang out of it so to speak."
The ambulances come at a cost of $477,317are locally outfitted and are funded through a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank.
