Email

Print

Belize is having a dengue outbreak - and seeing the greatest number of infections since 2015.  Reports say that two students: a sixth former from the north and a second former from the west have reportedly died from the disease. 

So what's the Ministry of Education doing to raise awareness amongst students of the symptoms?

We caught up with Minister of Education Patrick Faber earlier today and asked what's being done:

Hon. Patrick Faber - Minister of Education
"I join with the ministry of health to of course encourage the enabling of the environment to not have these kinds of mosquito diseases. I know for instance that some of our school campuses right here in Belize City there are a lot of mosquitoes. My son goes to school with his off but all our school administrations ought to do what they need to do in order to make sure that the kids who are really kept hostage if you will in the school for the entire day, we must do what we need to do in order to make sure that that environment is mosquito free. And so I make that appeal to the school's administrations to do their part to get rid of water, still water that is anywhere on the campus and also to do their kind of mosquito spraying if you will, or whatever it is they do to keep the mosquitoes down and of course I do wish to sympathize with the families of these two students that you speak of I think it is an unfortunate thing this is not something that people should be dying from. We should certainly be at a stage where we can prevent such deaths. It is everybody's business we ought to be doing better at educating in terms of these diseases but while it is that in this case they are two students I'm sure that the wider population is also being affected. So we ought to be doing better overall but we can most definitely sit down in the Ministry and see where it is we can be more effective in terms of getting this message out you have my commitment that, that will be done."