In other news, San Pedro Town has been practically bursting to contain its growing population - coupled with the large influx of tourists it gets. And now, the buzzing town will finally be getting its own hospital.
Currently, there is only a polyclinic, and patients have had to be flown to the mainland to get adequate services. This shortfall has long been a concern for tourists who go to San Pedro as their destination. And that's why the government proposed to build a hospital, with funding being from the Taiwanese government.
Today on the island, the prime minister and the Minister of Health spoke more about this project as he signed a Memorandum of Understanding.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"It certainly an exciting day, its actually historic, because the previous government was promising over and over, they were going to build a hospital. They even put it in the budget, I think 2 consecutive years and it was never done. We know that it is something that is needed. We're not doing the people
a favor, it is something that is needed for the residents and also for the tourists that come to visit Belize. It was high on our priority list to try to get the funding. We managed to meet with the foreign minister of Taiwan, the President and certainly the ambassador and we spoke to them about the need and they decided that they are prepared to partner with us in making the funding available. So now that the funding is available, we sign the MOU. It is going to be done through the OECC, that's the same company that's working on the highway in Sarteneja to Corozal, so now its about going to the next step to finalizing the plans and then getting the work going. We hope that we can ground break in by March, so we need to fast-forward the work that we're doing."
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health
"As you know the current polyclinic provides certain services, but its limited. The population has overgrown itself and so there is need for us to look at what we can do for San Pedro. It's a long-awaited promise that was made many years to the residents of San Pedro. This government is making this a reality and not just an infrastructure being built, but we are also going to be putting forward as I mention in my message the necessary human resource allocations whenever this hospital is completed to ensure that we have adequate support staff, we have the necessary services; dental, NCH, and all the other major services that needs to be provided here to provide secondary care for our citizens here in San Pedro. The polyclinic will continue to operate to provide primary care services to the residents, but the hospital will then compensate in providing other emergency services that is so badly needed as opposed to having us refer most our patients to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital. I can guarantee you it's going to be a facility that is not just a
facility built, but a facility that will come along with its human resource that is needed and to equip with the necessary medications and all of these things. As we have said before, all our facilities there have been challenges across the country, but we have been looking at what was there and improving on what we want to see."
The PM estimates that following the groundbreaking, construction will take about two years to complete. The cost of this project is 33 million dollars.
