In the House of Representatives meeting a little over two weeks ago, the prime minister announced a 90 million dollar loan to build a new tertiary hospital in Belmopan. Since then, the KHMH Workers Union has issued a release, saying that the money from the loan could be used to improve existing public healthcare facilities and address acute human resource shortages.
But today, the PM said that's a narrow mindset, and explained why he believes building the hospital in Belmopan is a better idea.
John Briceno, Prime Minister
"We fully recognize that but again, we have to be strategic in what we're doing. Karl Heusner has reached probably its max, it doesn't have much space to expand. The idea is for us to be able to build a new hospital in Belize probably in the Lake I area, you know we have the land available so that then we could have two regional hospitals in Belize that can provide some sort of tertiary services. But the truth is that if a hurricane were to hit Belize City, Belize country is going to lose its only tertiary level hospital, so the plan, what we discussed in Plan Belize was then to set up a new regional hospital in Belmopan, the hospital in Belmopan has been condemned, it's no good, so the only way we can do this is to redo it and so we want to do a regional hospital with tertiary services so that that could help relieve the pressure from Karl Heusner initially to be able to take care of the Cayo District, Stann Creek District, and the Toledo District. It relieves that pressure and also God forbid that we have ah hurricane, our patients from Karl Heusner can shelter in Belmopan with the necessary facilities to look after Tham. Karl Heusner needs help, of course they need more equipment, yes they need more equipment, and we're also working towards that. We're working with Cabei to see if we could get some more funding to be able to do that. The issue right now with the Saudis, we have just had diplomatic relations with the Saudis in last year September at the UN, we signed the diplomatic agreement between both countries and one of the first things they said, well, we're prepared to help you with a project and so they're lending us this money to build this hospital at 2% per annum. Five years we pay nothing and then we have another 20 years to pay that loan so it will give us the opportunity to build that hospital and at that hospital attach a university to be able to train our doctors and nurses so while I understand what the union from Karl Heusner are talking about, they're being a bit near sighted. We as a country, we have to be strategic, and that's exactly what we're doing now."
