Continuing his public education campaign on issues affecting ordinary Belizeans, Union Senator Glenfield Dennison took his message to the Karl Heusner Memorial Hospital today, where he criticized government spending priorities and called for greater investment in public healthcare. The appearance comes on the heels of a weekend demonstration in Belize City, during which Dennison drew attention to the high cost of living and its impact on families, arguing that poverty is leaving many Belizeans increasingly vulnerable. Today, he argued that underfunding KHMH while expanding the National Health Insurance program could have serious consequences for healthcare access and patient outcomes.
Glenfield Dennison
Glenfield Dennison, Union Senator
“I firmly believe that the investment that the government is making in the national health insurance is as a result of private sector benefiting from public healthcare, and I don’t like that. I think the funds that have been invested in NHI could have gone a long way if we had invested it strategically in the public healthcare system. And I don’t understand how at the same time of investing so much in NHI, we are not doing what we need to do to ensure that KHMH has everything that it needs and that the only tertiary level hospital in Belize is properly staffed with doctors and nurses and technicians who are being paid a livable wage according to their profession. I think it’s one of the saddest things when we are going to try to profit off of healthcare in this country. It is a sad taboo reality in our country that people are having to sell their children to buy food, and I was inspired by Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, which was written in 1729, where he made a proposal that the rich can buy the children of the poor to cook for their meat, and that would solve a few problems. It would make sure that the wealthy can afford, can have a nice protein-rich meal, and the poor will use that money to settle their lives, you know. And I thought that that thing three hundred years later is still relevant today, except we wouldn’t promote cannibalism. But what’s happening now is prostitution of children.”
Dennison argued that the rising cost of living is leaving children increasingly vulnerable to exploitation and abuse, calling on the government to tackle poverty and strengthen protections for families and young people.
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