TAIWAN PLEASE HELP US IN BELIZE!

This young mother in the maternity ward with two patients, screamed and screamed for the nurses to help her with her baby, last week. She gave birth herself and was ignored and the baby died from loss of oxygen, by the cord wrapping around the neck. The nurses were busy chatting and ignored her. This week another baby died under circumstances in which staff refused to treat the baby. ( source television news in Belize )
Punta Gorda Hospital in remote Toledo District in Southern Belize
A country home near Punta Gorda, Belize


TELEVISION IN BELIZE GIVES GOOD COVERAGE OF THE DISASTEROUS EFFECTS OF UNTRAINED STAFF AT PUNTA GORDA HOSPITAL AND POLYCLINIC IN SAN ANTONIO SERVING 25,000 people in remote communities.

The President of Taiwan has said on his recent visit that he would assist Belize on special projects. Here is one project that his country can assist Belize. The TOLEDO DISTRICT medical system is dysfunctional. Partly because of lack of money and partly because of lack of training of medical staff. They are reputedly using untrained amateurs to do the work of professionals according to media reporting. Deaths by neglect, of sick children are becoming more common.
A recent spate of unprofessional patient and customer service has resulted in two known children deaths and other problems with medical service in our remote Toledo District of Belize has come to light, so say the television news reporters for Belize City. It is only with the traveling of a port town news television media, that attention is being drawn to the neglect of the remote high rain forest country of the Toledo District. Television reporting on our remoter parts of our nation have been neglected up until now. The last year has seen a slight improvement. As they say, OUT OF SIGHT – OUT OF MIND.
There are about 25,000 people scattered in remote farming hamlets and villages in the highland jungles, numbering around 35 communities all through the mountainous high rain forest of the Toledo District. There are numerous problems, mostly due to political neglect by a system of political preferences of dealing mainly with only one city, the Port of Belize City. The other problem is the government of the day, simply does not have the money to deal with all the requests for various kinds of assistance.
What could be done by the Republic of Taiwan is a project of medical assistance to the Toledo District of Belize. I would suggest that two Taiwanese trained nurses be assigned to the Punta Gorda Hospital and another two nurses, to the new Polyclinic in San Antonio Town. While the system seems clear on the way they are supposed to work in paper plans; in performance, the system is dysfunctional and downright failing. This is nothing new for this remote Southern small scale farming area of the country of Belize, but it is only the advent of the occasional television news reporters bothering to go cover stories in the Toledo District this past six months, that the rest of the country is even hearing about the problems caused by political dysfunction and competition politically, for inadequate financial resources from limited government revenues. Recent untreated sick children deaths on television news have outlined the problems. There is either no copper wire telephone link between the Polyclinic in San Antonio Town in the mountainous foothills, and Punta Gorda Hospital on the coast, to arrange referrals of patients back and forth between them for better health care in some sort of new bureaucratic planned paper written system that does not work. Or the cost of telephoning is above the ability of the staff to pay out of their own pocket and they have no budget to cover telephone calls. When both Polyclinic and Hospital staff REFUSE to treat sick patients in the district and play the bureaucratic game of sending them back and forth, because their bureaucratic rules don't fit emergencies, without telephone communication in this difficult high rainfall district, this is too much for us taxpayers to tolerate. We in Western Belize feel outraged at the lack of citizen service to the public in this remote Toledo District.
Taiwan could send the trained nurses to do shift work and organize things in administration and performance and make these remote district government community health units workable. They could also advise the Taiwanese Ambassador directly, of the things these two places need in medical equipment and training tutorial aids and have Taiwan send directly through the Taiwanese Ambassador these materials, to end up in both the Polyclinic and the PG Hospital. If donations are not directed around our entrenched medical establishment, political preferences tend to steal the donations for more powerful political area representatives in places of Belize, that already have everything. The Toledo elected political Area Representatives are often amateurish, kept out of the political loop of power politics on the national scene, or unable to compete within the ruling party and make sure they get their fair share of needed medical things on a competitive system of priorities. Distribution of medical equipment and resource training is more often based on political power within the UDP party, vocal bluster and noise and intimidation, rather than by scientific facts, or district budget plans.
The President of Taiwan offered to do specific projects for Belize in the near future, instead of sending money to the government of Belize, the newspapers reported on this recent Presidential visit. If this is so, then this is one project Taiwan could improve health services in our remote neglected Toledo District, that obviously needs it. The administrative staff of the Punta Gorda Hospital need their nursing licenses revoked and expelled from the profession. We need people who care about people and when somebody sick comes in, they are treated immediately, at once by staff on hand. Irregardless of where they originate from in the country of Belize. Our population of the Toledo District may be uneducated, speak a different language at home and are farmers from remote muddy jungle locations, but that does not mean they are unimportant to the country of Belize to be treated like DIRT, by so-called superior medical staff with salaried jobs. TAIWAN HELP US! Take this on as a project.

LIFE ON THE TOLEDO DISTRICT OF BELIZE FRONTIER WITH GUATMALA

Mules carrying corn over frontier, from Belize to Guatemala to sell.
Guatemala and Belize map

CHANNEL 7 BORDER AREA IN TOLEDO

Excellent video on television this past week, by Channel 7 news on the news on Friday night. With dry season coming on, it showed the trade between farmers of Jalacte area of Toledo District and the neighboring village on the Guatemalan side of the border. The trade is mostly corn going out and it showed a Belizean farmer taking four hundred pounds of corn on a two pack mule, freight system, climbing up and down the hills and track through the beautiful hilly countryside, to the village on the other side of the OAS boundary zone. The video showed the labor involved in picking milpa corn cobs by hand, carried home. Using a tump head band traditional carrying system, for both man and woman, then to the village and then beaten on a rack with a stick to collect the kernels in a blanket or cloth. The subsequent corn was put into 100 lb sacks. These farmers then loaded corn on a mule and trekked ten miles across the frontier to sell it to a buyer on the other Guatmalan side at the trading post. The market is insatiable as there is not much milpa done in the Peten. Most of the land is in cattle, for the Guatemala City market and local populations require corn to live. The Belizean farmer gets .25 cents Belize per pound and can sell all they can provide. Farmers on the Belize side then buy their necessities, in manufactured goods from the Guatemalan trader, to take back home to Jalacte and surrounding villages on the Belize side of the remote frontier. There are no border fences, immigration posts, or anything like that.
Looked at from the viewpoint of port city people in Belize, this is a hard life. Quite the contrary, it is a seasonal life for the farmer. He grows his own food, builds as big a house as he wants, dependent on the communal labor supplied by his fellow villagers and lives in comparison to a port city lifestyle, a much richer family life and existence than they do, who live the more materialistic lifestyle of Belize City. A shortage of money is not a disastrous thing, as it is in Belize City were all daily functions work on money. There may not be much money involved, but you only need money for materialistic things, sometimes a novelty processed food item, like a soft drink, or luncheon meat or something different like that. Rubber boots, machete, tools and files are most common. Though I notice that the Belize side of the frontier, the villagers had cell phones, from Guatemala and which worked from the microwave cell tower servicing the village on the Guatemalan side. There is no comparable telecommunications service in the communities on the Belizean side of the border. On the Guatemalan side, they had roads to their farms and electricity as much as they needed from powerful transmission lines. Not so on the Belizean side of the border. If you are in range of the Guatemalan microwave tower you can get internet, telephone, television and all the modern things. On the Belizean side none of that is possible, except through the Guatemalan system.
The arrangement is that families on the Guatemalan side send their children into Belize to Punta Gorda for schooling, mainly to learn English, so they can be tri-lingual and have a better chance in life. Also for some reason, the land being given over to pasture for cattle on the Guatemalan side, there is little farming going on like in milpa and no free jungle land available on the Guatemalan side. On the Belizean side there is a lot of jungle land to be used for milpa and new generations can live and raise families, building their house out of bush materials as big as they want, or need free of charge, except for labor and a few bundles of tying wire. The Guatemalan side, trading store, is more of a trading post for basics and the sale of the extra corn not used for personal food on the Belizean side. Many Belizean farmers had cell phones. Using the Guatemalan cell phone system of course, you cannot get service on the Belize side of the border from our communications monopoly. Obviously our frontier Belizean milpa farmers are living very well and have enough money to pay for some gadgets to raise their life styles.
The scenery was very beautiful, the thatched wood homes simple, old fashioned, but denoted a very comfortable and pleasurable way of life. I think our frontier with Guatemala is going to get a lot more rural Belizean settlers very soon, for this simple but excellent country life style. The reason is the advantages of modern services from Guatemala and trade goods, accompanied by a ready market for corn and beans in Guatemala. A small milpa farmer on our Western frontier can live a darned good lifestyle. KUDOS to Channel 7 for this informative video.