Last night, we showed you the strong and unapologetic comments from KHMH Board member, Dr. Fernando Cuellar.
He was responding to the dismissive comments made by Minister of Health and Wellness, Michel Chebat on Wednesday. That's when he basically threw the KHMH management under the bus. The media was questioning the Minister about shortages of Midazolam and monitors at the KHMH because Ministry has been unable to procure these supplies.
Chebat said that they needed to "step up" and take responsibility for the management of the hospital. Dr. Cuellar said hospital board and staff were insulted and saw the Minister's remarks as unfair.
In fact, Dr. Cuellar told us that no one should be surprised if he resigned, and this morning, that's just what he did when he he informed his fellow board members that he was stepping down effective immediately.
At about the same time, the Minister of Health appeared on Love FM's morning show, and the hosts asked him once again about the shortages at the hospital. Quite surprisingly, he completely backtracked on his hardline from Wednesday afternoon and took responsibility:
Hon. Michel Chebat, Minister of Health and Wellness
"KHMH has been in saying that they have a shortage of medication and so forth. Let me tell you this: although KHMH is a managing authority and has a board that manages it, the ministry and the government of Belize is responsible for the KHMH and it is our obligation to make sure that they have sufficient medication and they have sufficient equipment to serve the people of this country. KHMH is our tertiary hospital and we have an obligation to make sure that they are properly supplied and we have an obligation to the medication and to the people who work there. We have seen the cries of the doctors and the nurses, especially those who are working in the covid section and we know the stress, we know the trauma that these people are going through and we have stepped up in certain ways to try to help them so that they can deal with these issues. The ministry of health and wellness, we are not mindless of that responsibility and we having been providing them as we get medications, as a matter of fact whenever we are in a situation of critical, what we do is we try to buy from local importers to make sure that the we never actually run out of medications and that commitment would continue."
