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In May of last year, the House of Representatives debated a loan motion for 90 million dollars for a tertiary hospital in Belmopan. The loan was from the Saudi Fund, and it would see the hospital built somewhere on UB's 800-acre campus.
Well, that was the original plan, but things have since changed. The government has decided to relocate the hospital somewhere in the vicinity of the Western Regional Hospital. It's a major blow to UB, especially since the new hospital would have also served as a teaching facility. Not only that, but our reports are that the government has spent around 6 million dollars to acquire this land - when the land at UB was free.
While the Minister of Health says that money does not come out of the fund itself, he explained that the reason for the relocation was for better access to the hospital.
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health
"I would not be able to speak on the cost of the land, that is something that is arranged through the Ministry of Economic Development, that's where the decision for that was done. However, there was other challenges, the location of accessibility, remember it's not just a teaching hospital, it's going to be a tertiary facility where you need to have immediate access and so they felt after the Ministry and other technical team looked at it, they felt that it needed to be at a different location that is more accessible but it will continue to serve as Dean Johnson mentioned, not just the tertiary teaching hospital but we also want to try to see how we can implement our regional facilities to also become some level of teaching facilities where people can go in and learn technical works and so forth but yes the decision was made to build the hospital at a different location, we are almost finished with the designs and I am hoping we can break ground on that new facilities by the end of this year."
Reporter:
"Do you feel that the money, I know you said it was the Ministry of Economic Development that made the decision, but do you feel that that money that went into sourcing this land will take away from the quality of the facility that's being built, since that money could have been used for the facility?"
Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health
"No no, that is totally separate from what the investment from the Saudis will be."
"We have to make sure that there's no change in the scope of it, that's why there's proper planning being done in terms of our policy unit, our planning unit, we are working closely with the University, we are working closely with the hospital designs that are there to ensure that all the facilities that a tertiary facility should have will be there so whether the land was purchased of so will not take away from what the construction of the facility will have when it's finished."
