Belize is a well-known destination for luxurious vacation getaways. While tourism has brought some wealth to the region, GDP growth has slowed over the past few years. Additionally, the impact of Hurricane Earl in August of 2016 has put stress on the country’s economy.
While the sunshine and snorkeling may seem alluring, there are a few health risks that the residents of this tropical region in Central America face.
Here are a few of the common diseases in Belize that affect its residents.
Hepatitis A and B
One common disease in the area is Hepatitis A. This disease can be contracted through food or water consumption. Additionally, this virus has a high chance of circulation in poor sanitary conditions.
The annual mortality rate per 100,000 people for Hepatitis A is approximately 0.1, according to a report by Health Grove. The report also stated that since 1990, this mortality rate has decreased by 68.6 percent.
Hepatitis B is also prevalent in Belize and can be transmitted through sexual contact, contaminated needles and blood products. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vaccines are highly recommended if you are anticipating the need for surgery. Hepatitis B has approximately the same mortality rate at Hepatitis A in Belize.
Since 1990, the Hepatitis B’s mortality rate has decreased by 69.2 percent, according to the Health Grove report.
Malaria
Belize is considered to be a low-risk country for malaria, though antimalarial medication is recommended for those more susceptible to contracting the disease, like women who are pregnant.
Belize is currently in the pre-elimination phase in order to control malaria in the region, according to a report from the Health Sector Strategic Plan. Between 2007, where there were 845 cases of malaria, and 2012, with only 37 cases, cases of malaria decreased by 95 percent in Belize. Other regions in Latin America have experienced a reduction in the number of cases of malaria over similar time spans.
The report also stated that even with limited resources and low per capita health expenditure, Belize has been able to make smart investments that have led to improvements in health services and the reduction of diseases like Malaria.
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is another one of the most common diseases in Belize. While the number of reported incidents of tuberculosis have remained consistent since 2010, mortality rates from tuberculosis have more than doubled since 1990. According to a report from the Health Sector Strategic Plan, this might be a reason for concern due to the productivity of the Directly Observed Treatment Scheme.
A report from the Commonwealth Health Online found that communicable diseases in Belize, meaning diseases that can be passed along through human interaction, made up 20 percent of the deaths that occurred in 2008, in addition to maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions.
Tuberculosis and other communicable diseases have seen a decline in recent years. According to a report from the World Health Organization, the success rate for new and relapse cases of tuberculosis registered in 2014 was 35 percent. While this rate saw a decline in recent years, its prevalence has gradually started to increase.
According to a report from the World Bank, between the fiscal years of 2012 and 2015, the International Finance Corporation expanded its role as an advisory to Belize and as an investor. As the report stands, this will help Belize with things like health services.
Leah Potter
Photo: Flickr
Decreasing the Poverty Rate in Hong Kong
In 2014, Hong Kong’s chief executive, Leung Chun-ying, proposed the Low-Income Working Family Allowance program. If a family’s income is at or below 50 percent of Hong Kong’s median income, and the family has at least one employed person, the family can receive up to $130 monthly or more, depending on the number of hours worked. The program is intended to reach 710,000 impoverished residents.
Since 2015, Hong Kong’s government implemented a second poverty alleviation plan. The plan provides Hong Kong’s government with a better understanding of the region’s impoverished areas and their specific situations. Hong Kong’s most impoverished groups and key strategies that could alleviate the poverty rate in Hong Kong are also being studied.
Hong Kong’s government also plans to enhance education and training opportunities, specifically jobs that facilitate mobility for the region’s youth. More financial, and other, assistance will be provided to Hong Kong’s poor families. The educational expenses for children within those families will also be considered.
The Old Age Living Allowance (OALA) is another program intended to alleviate poverty–specifically among Hong Kong’s elderly and impoverished communities. The OALA alleviated more than 43 million elderly Hong Kong residents in poverty in August 2016. Seeing this result has given Hong Kong’s government the goal to make similar programs that could help reduce the poverty rate in Hong Kong.
Groups and individuals outside of the government have also been doing their part to reduce the poverty rate in Hong Kong. Ho Hei-wah is a social activist who spent decades helping Hong Kong’s poor and continues to do so. Presently the director of the nonprofit Society for Community Organization (SCO), Hei-wah provides services to Hong Kong’s poor and other neglected communities. To Hong Kong’s people, Hei-wah is considered a champion and he plans to tackle future challenges facing the region’s poor.
In 2016, Habitat for Humanity found that many impoverished Hong Kong residents are forced to live in hazardous industrial homes, typically called “urban slums.” The organization is urging the government, charities and the public to work together in tackling Hong Kong’s housing problems. Habitat for Humanity plans for 15 million Hong Kong residents to have safe housing by 2020.
Decreasing the poverty rate in Hong Kong has become a main goal for many people. While some plans are still in progress, the mission to better the lives of Hong Kong’s impoverished communities remains an important priority. For now, Hong Kong’s poor are given hope that a better quality of life is soon to come.
– Rhondjé Singh Tanwar
Closing the Gap in Global Education
Indeed, education can eliminate bigger problems such as poverty, inequality, insecurity and disease. Equal access to a quality education, including access to content and means of delivering instruction and following a set curriculum, remains an unrealized dream and a struggle for many.
The last two centuries have seen an exponential increase in the number of children attending primary school globally, from 2.3 million to 700 million today. What is troubling is that children in the poorest households of developing nations, those arguably most in need of educational opportunities, are four times as likely to be out of school as those in the wealthiest households.
It is going to take another 100 years for children in developing countries to reach the education level of their counterparts in developed countries.
Access to a quality education remains a basic building block to success. Current approaches to educational equity necessitate a fundamental rethinking in that they must take into account that many children are unable to go to school because schools simply do not exist in parts of developing countries.
If schools do exist, teachers may lack proper training and simply be incapable of handling the demands of a classroom setting. Furthermore, barriers inherent in certain areas, such as societal demands and expectations, can hamper learning outside the classroom.
Technological tools and resources ignite curiosity and promote more efficient, up-to-date learning. A huge growth in social media platforms can certainly be aligned with classroom activity and curriculum, establishing more innovative ways for students and teachers to learn about global issues.
Though technology makes learning opportunities more widely accessible by decreasing the significance of geographical boundaries, a lack of technological infrastructure means that many children are deprived of the digital educational resources taken for granted in developed nations. For these students, the difficulty of closing the gap in global education comes with an additional cost: loss of productivity.
In 2015, the United Nations heavily promoted the Millennium Development Goals to achieve free universal primary education for all children by the year’s end.
Although it was unfortunate that the pace of improvement by countries could not keep up with the desire to have universal primary education, the primary school net enrollment rate did reach over 90 percent, and the number of out-of-school children fell from 100 million in 2000 to 57 million in 2015 . Movement toward closing the gap in global education is signified by the fact that not a single country in the world today is completely without a schooling system.
Today’s economy is knowledge-based and highly competitive. Schools in developed nations are entrusted with students who lack neither skills nor talents, but educational opportunities.
Some factors are beyond students’ control, such as where they were born and what their financial means are. But with the recent advancements in educational models, global education disparity can meaningfully be addressed and mitigated.
– Mohammed Khalid
Photo: Flickr
Blockchain Technology and Poverty Disruption
The inner mechanisms and mathematical coding of blockchain are highly complex. The principle is simple. It is a public ledger, stored and spread across multiple networks in countries around the world, making an impermeable information network. The decentralized nature of the data stored on blockchain allows for its application across all sectors without risk of disruption.
Significant to alleviating poverty, blockchain technology’s secure nature allows for it to be used as a financial services platform. In both urban and rural areas of developing countries, banks can be hard to come by, expensive to set up an account in and somewhat unreliable.
Cryptocurrency services can be scaled up and down to be incorporated into everything from the most basic phones to the world’s most sophisticated smartphones. This cryptographic technology would allow its users to send money directly to other individuals without a middleman or “trusted third parties” which take a percentage as a fee for its services and can be largely inaccessible.
Estimates suggest that by 2020 over 70 percent of the world will have access to smartphones. With financial technologies such as blockchain services, there is a real chance for those in rural or economically unstable countries to secure themselves without huge risk. Blockchain technology and poverty could have a progressive and important relationship.
By using cryptocurrencies or internet-money, individuals in financially insecure nations can take steps to avoid financial vulnerabilities, such as fraud or hyperinflation. M-PESA, a mobile money-transfer and micro-loan financing company, operates all across Africa and in parts of central Asia. Numbers from early 2017 suggest that M-PESA’s user base allowed approximately 186,000 families, two percent of Kenyan households, move from poverty into sustainable working conditions.
Blockchain’s financial services allow for mass participation in the most remote parts of the world. A wide range of business owners can build financial credibility. Currently, Chinese pharmaceutical companies receive assistance from Yijan, a blockchain created by IBM and Hejia, a Chinese supply management company.
Significant and notable players on the international landscape are quickly getting involved in blockchain techniques. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation’s Level One Project aims to use digital financial services to bring the impoverished into the formal economic ecosystem, providing them with the tools necessary for financial mobility.
In early 2017, the United Nation’s World Food Programme (WFP) incorporated blockchain technology and cash-based transfers into its humanitarian aid outreach in Pakistan. By using mobile-transfers, the WFP ensured that those in need were receiving financial aid without the risk of the disruption possible with cash-based aid. The technology-based transfers also allowed for the WFP to streamline its tracking system. Since the success in Pakistan, the WFP has chosen to expand blockchain to other humanitarian efforts.
These are a few of blockchain’s many applications. Its reach and potential as a tool for poverty alleviation are great, especially if utilized jointly by governments and NGOs. Although it may be no panacea, the incorporation of blockchain technology may be a significant macro approach in solving the systematic issue of poverty. Blockchain technology and poverty disruption may be one of the most exciting aspects of the new digital age.
– Sydney Nam
Reducing Poverty with Mobile Phones in Sub-Saharan Africa
For these people, a cell phone can mean a world of difference, and it doesn’t end with just agriculture. From education to banking to health, mobile phones opened up to a whole new realm of possibilities for the citizens of developing countries.
The GMSA Mobile Economy 2017 report predicts that mobile phones in Sub-Saharan Africa will reach half a billion users by 2020. This is more than double the number at the end of 2016, making it the fastest growing region in the world. The report attests the climb in numbers to the increased affordability of mobile devices and the improved market for used devices. In addition to the accessibility of information generated by mobile, the economy benefited as well, supplementing 3.5 million jobs in 2016. Tech start-ups are thriving in a mobile Africa as well. According to GMSA, “some 77 tech start-ups across the region raised just over $366.8 million in funding in 2016, growth of 33 percent compared to the previous year.” The opportunities that mobile platforms allow are attracting both talent and investment, according to GMSA.
Sub-Saharan Africa had 140 mobile money services in 39 countries as of December 2016, giving more and more users easy access to paying their bills online and sending/receiving money between friends and businesses. Zazu is Africa’s first digital-only bank, providing users with a debit card, a point-and-pay feature that utilizes the phone to scan payments with participating merchants and a mobile app to access transactions.
The mobile community provides impoverished people the chance to access financial services to make investments, save money and manage expenses. M-Pesa, for example, is a widely-used money-transferring mobile platform that recently added a savings and credit feature. According to GMSA, the platform lifted 194,000 Kenyan households out of poverty since 2006.
The report notes that there are more than 1,000 mobile health services that target families in developing countries. Sub-Saharan Africa makes up 25 percent of the global “disease burdened” population but only accounts for three percent of health workers. Living Goods supports health needs in Sub-Saharan Africa via a mobile platform run by trained health professional agents, focusing on child deaths with simple and affordable solutions. The agents use the mobile platform to identify diseases such as malaria and send automatic SMS reminders to the patient ensuring that they complete the whole course of treatment. Pregnant women can sign up to receive weekly messages with advice on maternal health and nutrition according to where they are at in their pregnancy. Living Goods even sells its own brand of food with nutrients and vitamins, often too difficult for people in developing African countries to access.
Mobile technology also allows those in poverty to receive better educations. Eneza Education is a learning platform utilizing mobile phones in Sub-Saharan Africa, enabling users to communicate with teachers and lesson programs via SMS, the web and Android. Students of all levels can take courses in any subject and interact instantly with teachers via their tablet, computer, or mobile phone. They also offer small business courses and teacher refreshment courses (which is hugely important, considering only about one-quarter of pre-primary teachers are trained in Sub-Saharan Africa). Eneza already has over two million subscribers across Africa and over 300,000 questions have been answered by their live ask-a-teacher feature.
Kytabu, out of Nairobi, allows users to essentially lease required learning and teaching materials (such as textbooks) online through their mobile device. The application provides exams, educational videos, group-chat classrooms, audiobooks and learning games.
Although accessibility to mobile phones in Sub-Saharan Africa is relatively new, the innovations made so far are a great testament to the technology’s potential. Clearly, the simplest technologies have the power to improve developing countries and make strides towards the elimination of poverty. In a modern world where phones have become grouped with simple technology, they are becoming as much of a right as water filters and electricity.
The things which we take for granted every day hold so much power. Think of what a cell phone can do.
– Katherine Gallagher
Photo: Flickr
Cost of Living in Thailand
Public transportation
A bus fee ranges from approximately THB 8 to 30, depending on the type of the bus. Since one Thai Baht is worth about $0.03, public transportation can cost less than a dollar. Tuk-tuks, the three-wheeled taxis that are common in the country, normally cost THB 40 to 100 for a short ten-minute ride, which is also highly affordable. The base fare for metered taxis is THB 35.
Housing
Cheap rental and housing prices also contribute to the low cost of living in Thailand. Numbeo states that an expensive one-bedroom apartment inside the City Center in Bangkok costs around THB 14,317 (equivalent to approximately $430), which is much cheaper than the rent in major U.S. cities.
Food prices
The food prices in Thailand are also much less expensive than those in most developed countries. For example, the prices of most popular grocery items are as follows: a loaf of bread costs $1.12, which is only half of its average price in the United States, Additionally, a dozen eggs costs $1.65, compared to the average price of $2.23 in the United States.
The street foods are also known for their affordability. A simple meal consisting of rice, vegetables and meat on a single plate ranges from approximately THB 30 to 50, which equals to just more than one dollar. A fancier meal with a selection of dishes that may often include an entire fish would cost from THB 60 to 200 ($2 to $6).
The aforementioned factors are main contributors to the low cost of living in Thailand. However, the high possibility of continued economic growth would gradually increase the cost of living in Thailand.
– Minh Joo Yi
Photo: Flickr
Malala Advocates for a State of Emergency for Education
While Nigeria is one of Africa’s wealthier nations, it also has the highest number of out-of-school children in the world. In fact, 10.5 million Nigerian children are out of school, 60 percent of them girls, according to the United Nations Children’s Education Fund (UNICEF). Many of these children live in the country’s northeast region, particularly in the Boko Haram hub of Maiduguri, in which education has been under attack for the past nine years.
Boko Haram destroyed the classrooms and schools in the area. Most notably, the group is responsible for the abduction of more than 200 girls from their school in the remote town of Chibok in April 2014. This prompted international outrage and the #BringBackOurGirls movement, for which Malala herself campaigned online. Of the abducted girls, only 106 were released, rescued or escaped after more than three years in captivity. The other 113 are still in custody of the extremist group. As a long-time advocate for girls’ education, especially in war torn areas, Malala is the perfect spokesperson for the state of emergency for education in Nigeria.
In an op-ed in The Guardian, Malala detailed her visit to Maiduguri and the girls she met there “who have faced so much violence and fear in their young lives but are still determined to go to school.”
“Studies are clear,” she says in another interview, ”educating girls grows economies, reduces conflict, and improves public health.” The percentage of Nigeria’s budget for education decreased from 9 percent to 6 percent since her last visit to Nigeria in 2014. Meanwhile, the international benchmark for education spending is 20 percent of a country’s overall budget. In her meeting with President Osinbajo, she outlined several necessary key changes including declaring a “state of emergency for education” to focus attention on the education of Nigerian children.
She also suggested that Nigeria make school funding public and triple its education budget. She emphasized that the country should implement the Child Rights Act in all states. Her main goal is to raise awareness of unenrolled children in Nigeria and to highlight the fact that if Nigeria makes education a priority, it has the material means to make vast improvements.
Nigeria is in a state of emergency for education. Across West Africa, 46 percent of primary school-aged children out of school are Nigerian. Globally, one in five children not enrolled in school is Nigerian. During the Boko Haram insurgency which began in 2009, the group killed 2,295 teachers and destroyed almost 1,400 schools, displacing over 19,000 people.
Organizations such as UNICEF work closely with the Nigerian government to decrease these worrying statistics, especially in northeastern Nigeria. More than 525,000 children enrolled in school this year alone, while the country established over 37 temporary learning spaces. Relief organizations distributed about 92,000 packs of learning materials to help children continue their educations in areas especially vulnerable to attack.
Advocates like Malala are important in creating change because they put new international spotlights and pressure on governments to reprioritize education. Time will tell if the changes she envisions for schoolchildren in Nigeria come to pass. Continued advocacy work around this issue is important to ensure that a generation of schoolchildren does not fall behind.
– Saru Duckworth
Photo: Flickr
Water and Sanitation in the Solomon Islands
There are disparities in access to water and sanitation in the Solomon Islands between urban and rural areas. Rural areas house 80 percent of the population (480,000), and there is a relative lack of water and sanitation services. In fact, nearly 70 percent of the population does not have access to appropriate sanitation services.
However, a study from 2007 concluded that 97 percent of urban areas compared to 65 percent of rural areas had access to clean water supply. A similar, but much greater disparity is present in access to sanitation facilities. In 2007, 98 percent of urban areas and 18 percent of rural areas had access to sanitation facilities.
The quality of the Solomon Islands’ urban water did not achieve The World Health Organization’s drinking water standards in 2007. Drinking water with unsafe levels of contamination has adverse effects on health and can cause diarrhea and other water-borne diseases. In 2002, diarrheal diseases accounted for seven percent of mortalities in the Solomon Islands.
In 2015, 93 percent of urban areas and 77 percent of rural areas gained access to improved water sources. This data indicates that the disparity in access to water between urban and rural areas has narrowed. Access to improved, private sanitation facilities in urban areas (72 percent) was disproportionately greater than access in rural areas (8 percent) in 2015.
Without sanitation facilities or access to working toilets or latrines, people’s only option is open defecation. Open defecation and the absence of washing facilities are associated with poor hygiene and an increased risk for skin and eye infections as well as mosquito-borne diseases, like malaria and dengue fever. A lack of private sanitation facilities is also linked to higher incidences of physical and sexual violence. When people—especially women—go outside to bathe and defecate, their vulnerability to violence increases.
A government initiative to improve hygiene, water and sanitation in the Solomon Islands is included in the Solomon Islands Red Cross Society Strategic Plan for 2017 to 2020. If the Red Cross Society Strategic Plan’s target of helping 200,000 people with water, hygiene and sanitation is reached, the results could improve health outcomes and the lives of people in the Solomon Islands.
– Gabrielle Doran
Photo: Flickr
Taking a Look at Common Diseases in Angola
Beginning with the general health numbers, the life expectancy in Angola hovers around 56 years. This ranks it as number 208 among a list of 224 nations. Although on the rise, this ranking among the global community illustrates some major health issues present in the nation.
Poor quality of drinking water, a common source of fatal illnesses in countries with low life expectancies, is a main contributor to this nation’s life expectancy problem. The CIA World Factbook states that just under 50 percent of the drinking water has improved. This excludes a majority of the population, especially those living in rural areas.
This lack of clean water, along with a plethora of other factors, affects the children of Angola as well. Angola has an infant mortality rate of 7.6 percent, placing them at the eighth-highest in the world. Premature death, in general, is also high in this African nation.
According to the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, six out of the top 10 causes of death in Angola are communicable diseases (contractible diseases, which are therefore preventable). This is amplified in cases of premature death, where eight out of 10 are communicable, with congenital defects and road injuries as the outliers.
What is most surprising, however, is not how these illnesses are contracted, but the diseases themselves. This is the case for the third-highest of the common diseases in Angola which cause death: diarrheal illnesses.
“Diarrheal disease is highly preventable, yet accounts for nine percent of all deaths among children under age five worldwide,” reads a peer-reviewed research article by Liliana Carvajal-Vélez et al.
In this article, the researchers go on to explain how preventable these types of diseases are. They also reiterate a joint statement by the World Health Organization and UNICEF on how to better stave off diarrheal diseases. The statement highlights Oral Rehydration Salts (ORS), zinc supplements and increased amounts of clean water and nutritional foods as keys to combating the illnesses. There is evidence to support that ORS alone can reduce diarrheal disease-related deaths by up to 93 percent.
However, this does not solve the entirety of the problem.
Another issue that instigates diarrheal diseases in countries such as Angola is the withholding of fluids from children affected by a diarrheal illness. An analysis in six African nations found an association between caregivers withholding vital fluid intake and seeking care outside of the home. This was particularly the case with people seeking “non-government health providers” (or non-professionals).
Studies suggest that training public physicians on how to treat children needing ORS and zinc while also instructing caregivers to give more sanitized fluids, not less, are effective in improving children’s health. By using methods like these, several of the common diseases in Angola could become much less common.
– Stephen Praytor
Photo: Google
Making Strides Through Peace Education in Rwanda
In the wake of the 1994 genocide, peace education in Rwanda teaches children from different ethnic backgrounds how to reconcile their differences and empathize with one another.
In classrooms filled with children of both Tutsi and Hutu ethnicities, conflict is frequent. Although many of these children are too young to remember the genocide that claimed the lives of nearly one million Rwandans, primarily Tutsis, they live with the after-effects of the trauma that their families endured.
Many children grew up hearing one-sided or incomplete narratives. Others suffer more tangible losses: the death of a parent, or a family member in jail, and the resulting economic difficulties.
At school, children directly impacted by the genocide often become targets for bullying. Students who receive government compensation meet daily resentment. Classmates scorn genocide orphans who cannot afford clothes. There is no outright fighting; the methods of intimidation are more subtle. Notebooks thrown in toilets, name-calling and anonymous letters filled with threats are not uncommon.
The UK-based NGO International Alert helps to bring students from different ethnic backgrounds together in Peace Clubs. Here, they can better understand the conflict they witness in the classroom and discuss their individual narratives. International Alert supports similar clubs for adults, which bring victims and perpetrators together in conversation. However, those under 24 years old receive a special focus, since they make up 60% of the country’s population.
Peace Club members engage in critical thinking activities. They observe and interpret images with messages that are not always straightforward. Through plays, poems and acted-out scenes they examine prejudices and stereotypes, mapping out the route from conflict to reconciliation. They also learn about people who refused to commit atrocities during the genocide, treating them as role models.
The club is invested in creating strong connections between members and within the greater community. Club members work together through cooperative projects and volunteer to do community service for group members’ parents who are struggling.
A conflict-free classroom relies on empathic students, but also on a peace-centered system of learning. Aegis Trust, the organization that runs the Kigali Genocide Memorial, trains teachers for the best ways to approach and lead discussions about the genocide with their students.
This new peace education in Rwanda is directly in contrast to the old curriculum, which was designed to discriminate and to foster hatred and division among students. Out of fear, many teachers chose not to talk about the genocide at all, leaving the children to draw their own conclusions based on what they heard at home.
Aegis also comes into the classroom to offer day-long courses in peace-building. In the morning, they revisit the country’s history, learning about the ways that hate leads to violence and the necessity of reconciliation. In the afternoons, the students take a trip to the Genocide Memorial, an experience that is so horrifying that it leaves some of them in tears.
The students say that these sessions make a clear difference in the overall attitude of the school. Students, regardless of their ethnicity, began to treat one another with compassion and to support those with physical needs. Anti-genocide clubs formed. The teens and young adults spoke with one another about what they learned.
In 2015, the Rwandan government launched the Peace Education Program, which incorporates peace into every subject taught in the schools. Aegis continues to advise teachers on the best way to overcome suspicion in the classroom. They also try to instill in their students the ability to trust in the future.
Only education can give them that future. As Rwandan Minister of Education Hon. Dr. Vincent Biruta said, “Education is our only hope that atrocities will not happen again.” As a result, peace education in Rwanda continues to open up a much-needed dialogue about past conflict.
– Emilia Otte
Photo: Google
Common Diseases in Belize
While the sunshine and snorkeling may seem alluring, there are a few health risks that the residents of this tropical region in Central America face.
Here are a few of the common diseases in Belize that affect its residents.
Hepatitis A and B
One common disease in the area is Hepatitis A. This disease can be contracted through food or water consumption. Additionally, this virus has a high chance of circulation in poor sanitary conditions.
The annual mortality rate per 100,000 people for Hepatitis A is approximately 0.1, according to a report by Health Grove. The report also stated that since 1990, this mortality rate has decreased by 68.6 percent.
Hepatitis B is also prevalent in Belize and can be transmitted through sexual contact, contaminated needles and blood products. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), vaccines are highly recommended if you are anticipating the need for surgery. Hepatitis B has approximately the same mortality rate at Hepatitis A in Belize.
Since 1990, the Hepatitis B’s mortality rate has decreased by 69.2 percent, according to the Health Grove report.
Malaria
Belize is considered to be a low-risk country for malaria, though antimalarial medication is recommended for those more susceptible to contracting the disease, like women who are pregnant.
Belize is currently in the pre-elimination phase in order to control malaria in the region, according to a report from the Health Sector Strategic Plan. Between 2007, where there were 845 cases of malaria, and 2012, with only 37 cases, cases of malaria decreased by 95 percent in Belize. Other regions in Latin America have experienced a reduction in the number of cases of malaria over similar time spans.
The report also stated that even with limited resources and low per capita health expenditure, Belize has been able to make smart investments that have led to improvements in health services and the reduction of diseases like Malaria.
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis is another one of the most common diseases in Belize. While the number of reported incidents of tuberculosis have remained consistent since 2010, mortality rates from tuberculosis have more than doubled since 1990. According to a report from the Health Sector Strategic Plan, this might be a reason for concern due to the productivity of the Directly Observed Treatment Scheme.
A report from the Commonwealth Health Online found that communicable diseases in Belize, meaning diseases that can be passed along through human interaction, made up 20 percent of the deaths that occurred in 2008, in addition to maternal, perinatal and nutritional conditions.
Tuberculosis and other communicable diseases have seen a decline in recent years. According to a report from the World Health Organization, the success rate for new and relapse cases of tuberculosis registered in 2014 was 35 percent. While this rate saw a decline in recent years, its prevalence has gradually started to increase.
According to a report from the World Bank, between the fiscal years of 2012 and 2015, the International Finance Corporation expanded its role as an advisory to Belize and as an investor. As the report stands, this will help Belize with things like health services.
Leah Potter
Photo: Flickr