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“Let’s make healthier choices togetherâ€￾ - that was the theme of a health fair held today in downtown Belize City.  Organized by the Belize Cancer Society, the idea was to focus on non communicable diseases.  WE learned about two: cervical cancer and mental illness:..

Sharmane Garcia - BFLA Marketing Officer
"Basically we constantly push education because you could never do enough and we welcome the invitation to these health fairs because we get to meet the population on a different level. Today what we're trying to push is our HPV testing, the human papilloma virus screening. It's a new service being offered at BFLA and we're doing a promotion right now for only 35 dollars. What this HPV screening does is, it goes to the direct root of what is the main cause of cervical cancer."

Sahar Vasquez - Mind Health Connect
"Our goal is to educate the Belizean public on what mental health is and how they can get treatment and help to manage it. There's a lot of stigma towards it, so people feel scared to come out and talk about it because they feel if they come out and they go to therapy, their peers might think they are crazy or they might not want to associate with them, hence the reason we are trying to bring more light to it. Having a mental illness doesn't mean you're crazy, it's like any other disease, you just can't see it on a blood test or an x-ray but it's there and it's treatable and manageable and millions of people live with it every day."

The fair also featured the Red Cross, The Belize Cancer Society and others.