And from that virus to measles…
Last week the Ministry briefed us on the measles outbreak they were investigating after receiving reports of persons with symptoms. They told us how it arrived into the country and how the cases were being dealt with. Today their acting deputy director for public health and wellness gave us an update on the situation.
Dr Laura Friesen - Acting Dep Director of Public Health and Wellness
"So currently up to today we have only identified 12 cases in Belize they were in 4 different clusters thankfully the last case was about 2 weeks ago however we maintained heightened surveillance and vigilance in the whole country and we keep encouraging everyone to look at their vaccination record because we do have a regional outbreak happening, Guatemala and Mexico specifically have very high cases right now we know we have a lot of people that travel. So we are putting out this education again and again that if we are not vaccinated and we travel to these countries there is a high risk of getting the disease in these areas that the outbreak has been identified and also bringing it back into our population where we have vulnerable children especially under the age of 1 who are below the age that they get vaccinated routinely for measles and they also have the risk of the greatest severity of complications due to measles so we really, we are really working hard and we want to encourage the public to do their part as well".
