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Signing on behalf of GOB was Prime Minister John Briceno, and he spoke more about why this study is more than necessary in order to advance national healthcare.

John Briceno, Prime Minister
"What has happened, as I pointed out in Plan Belize the health sector plays a very important role in the development of Belize. In Plan Belize we were talking about expanding the national health insurance, which we are doing now the entire district of Coroza, Orange Walk, the Belize district, Stann Creek and Toledo are covered. Wwe are starting to move into the Cayo district. So we want to cover the entire country but we also have to upgrade the secondary healthcare hospitals. Orange walk is a good example. This was built about 50 years ago and we have outgrown this hospital and I am hoping that with the NHI we are easing the pressures of the amount of people going there, but we still have to upgrade the facilities. We have to modernize the facilities. And the same thing happened with the community hospital in Punta Gorda that where we set up the regional hospitals, the regional hospitals in the south are in Dangriga, but that is about 100 miles away. So, A it is too far especially for emergencies, and B we have a lot of people that do not have - especially in the Toledo district being the poorest district - they do not have the wherewithal to get to the facilities so we decided working with CABEI working with Taiwan between them, they are giving us a grant of US$900,000 almost 1,000,000 US to do a feasibility study for these two places and how we can upgrade them."

"In Orange Walk we are looking at if it's feasible to continue building there or do we have to build a totally new hospital. We are not the experts. It's important that we bring the experts to take that look likewise that's what we did for the Toledo district. How we can improve this community hospital to be able to provide more of the secondary services that our citizens need in Toledo district."