Bernard Responds to Psychiatric Medicine Shortage

Recently, there have been reports of a shortage of Risperidone in Belize. This medication is crucial for treating psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia because it’s both affordable and effective. We spoke with the Minister of Health and Wellness, Kevin Bernard, about the ministry’s plan to tackle this shortage.

 

Kevin Bernard, Minister of Health and Wellness

“If you’re referring to patients suffering from mental illness, there has been some issues but the Ministry continuously tries our very best to procure these medications in a timely manner. There are times that it’s very out of our control. But just recently, I know we, we recently ordered some of these urgent medications. These are very delicate medications and we are making sure we can make these available in a very timely manner.  I cannot speak much to that, but I can tell you that we are doing very everything possible to ensure that we have supply in the country so that we’re able to attend to our patients that needs these services. Now, we have people that are host at the Palm View Center and other facilities that we do provide these services. The demand and supply chain sometimes constantly disrupts our medication supplies. And so we have to look around and see how best we can address those things. But let me assure those persons and those families that we’re doing our very best to ensure that we have those medication supplies so we can provide to those who need them.”