Health Minister Defends GOB’s Drug Act Amendment

Last month, the Government of Belize overhauled the old Food and Drug registration, licensing, and inspection regulations, introducing new laws to better oversee pharmaceutical products. Amid these legislative changes, the Ministry of Health’s Chief Drug Inspector resigned to join the private sector. Tonight, Health Minister Kevin Bernard confirmed that a new health inspector is being considered for the role. He also explained how the drug inspection unit has been working diligently to ensure that essential medicines remain available in Belize.

 

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health & Wellness

“You have seen where our drug inspectorate unit our inspectors have been out. If it was not because of them, we would not have been able to pick up on many of these issues that we’ve seen.  We have won cases where we have seen contraband medications coming in, where we have seized, and we work very closely with the Customs and Police Department. And that just proves that work has been going on by that unit.  We are serious when it comes to ensuring that the pharmaceuticals, the medications that are coming into this country is of standard. And that’s one of the reasons why our people go out and do constant investigations, constant review of facilities across the country, private and public. And we need to ensure that this is safety of our people.  To say that this amendment to the drug act that we are proposing is going to allow these pharmaceutical companies to do the same thing or more, that is not we’re trying to strengthen it. We’re trying to bring in more penalties to ensure that we do not see the repeat of these type of things. If you look at the act completely, it speaks of many regulations it’s a draft at this point in time I was able to take it to commit for approval and then it goes through the necessary. Process of farther content. No, remember this entire bill was had several consultations done across the various sectors of the and we need to ensure that we’re following international regulations set out by the WHO and other agencies. And so we have developed this bill to ensure for the safety of our people  and for proper regulations to take place.”