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| San Pedro Daily |  |
Sunday,
June 26, 2011 Go Green! |
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ISLAND SUPERMARKET
"Best
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Heritage
Foundation says lot of work needed to build back
positive investor climate in Belize
The Belize Chamber of
Commerce spoke out against the repercussions of the
government nationalization of Belize Electricity
Limited. Foreign Investment Confidence in Belize is
underscored by the Standard and Poor's report of a
possible downgrading on its charts. The Heritage
Foundation, which publishes the yearly Economic
Freedom and Growth Index in conjunction with the Wall
Street Journal, has also sounded the alarm on the BEL
controversy. When News Five spoke to James Roberts
about the nationalization, he indicated that it would
take a lot of work to build back a positive investor
climate.
Jose Sanchez It's a done deal; the government has sold its case to the general public. But what can our country or people in government do to move forward in improving investor confidence in the country? What actually can be done?  James
Roberts, Heritage Foundation's Research Fellow
for Economic Freedom and Growth
"Well I think that the people can insist that their elected officials follow rule books and not do stuff behind in the scenes in a hurry up basis or without proper notification and to ignore the advice and the council of experts when it comes to individual sectors of the economy. I know that there were electricity regulatory experts who testified in court cases in Belize about the rate setting problems. People have to demand that their politicians represent them to their best interests and not just the special interest around the politicians, but the interests of all people of Belize. That's what needs to be done. It's a beautiful country and I love the people of Belize. It's a great place to go scuba diving and I hope that they can turn around this problem with the investment climate so that you can get more investment to continue to expand your tourism possibilities. I know there are possibilities in your economy." Jose Sanchez As a think tank group, what really and truly is the weight that you carry? What's your audience? Who listens to you? Who do you influence? James Roberts Well we try to influence every one of course and anybody who owes it to us. But we tend to reflect conservative viewpoints that are expressed by conservative politicians and our seven hundred and fifty thousand donors in the United States who send us money to keep us operating. We don't get any government money so those are the people we reflect. We reflect their views when we speak to the government here in Washington at all levels and other governments if they want to listen to us. CH5 STUDY ON USE OF
CONDOMS RELEASED
USAID today
released its findings of a study that was
recently done.
Maria Novelo reporting... “Findings for the HIV/AIDS study on the use of condoms among Female Sex workers and Men who have sex with men were revealed today at the Matalon Building in Belize City. The study provides an assessment of key health behaviors and was conducted in five districts including Belize City, Stann Creek, Cayo, Orange Walk and Corozal. Country manager Lara Smith says PASMO and its partners looked at behavioral practices that are associated with safer sex behavior resulting in HIV Prevention. Lara Smith – Country Manager, PASMO “Nationally we have identified that there is a lot of work to be done for all partners engaged. PASMO is just one member of the national HIV/AIDS response and we are fully collaborating with the National HIV/AIDS Commission, the Ministry of Health, other UN agencies, other key line ministries and other non profit organizations to really look at the results that we have and really developing strategies moving forward that are going to address some of the issues that we have highlighted. We have seen a decline in the use of condoms during sexual encounter, it depends somewhat on the type of client that the female sex worker would have, is it a new client, is it an occasional client, is it a stable partner. Condom use does vary when we talk about different types of clients or partners that individuals would have but generally we have seen a decrease.” Higher prevalence rates have been indicated in these high risks groups and Smith says that the availability and accessibility of condoms is key to adapt safer sexual behaviors. Lara Smith – Country Manager, PASMO “How available are condoms within the high risk areas, within the bars and brothels where female sex workers work out of. Looking at that availability of condoms so working to have condoms for sale within these bars, in these brothels, within close proximity of these areas that individuals can access condoms; also looking at the pricing structure of condoms for a lot of these night risk groups, condoms may be too expensive.” Smith says currently the National HIV AIDS commission is revising the National Strategic and operating plan and that results like these will influence the construction of the plan looking at more targeted prevention strategies and involvement of key partners. Lara Smith – Country Manager, PASMO “Currently right now we are constructing what we call our delta marketing plan which will look at these results and we will develop profiles based on these results of; okay, this is an MSM that we need to target and we will develop our interpersonal communication activities and also our mass media campaign from this research. So this research will directly guide the future implementation of our programs.” Smith says the findings show that there is space for re-introduction of VIVE condoms for which PASMO is a distributor, so they are looking at increasing the availability and access of condoms within bars and brothels in these targeted areas. LoveFM FOCUS ON YOUTH
AND DIABETES When
diabetes strikes during childhood, it is
routinely assumed to be type one, or
juvenile-onset, diabetes. However, in the
last two decades, type two diabetes,
formerly known as adult-onset diabetes,
has been reported among children and
adolescents with increasing frequency in
Belize. With the increase of obesity,
sedentary children on their computers, and
processed junk food and soda intake,
children are becoming more susceptible to
Type two diabetes long before they become
adults. In response to this, a pilot three
country project entitled The Management of
Diabetes in Youth is being carried out by
the Belize Diabetes Association and our
partners in Jamaica. Visiting Belize for
the first time is Shelly McFarlane,
project Manager from Jamaica who will
assist to steer the project in Belize.
Shelly McFarlane – Project Manager “We are finding a lot of type two diabetes especially in the younger children where because of the obesity epidemic we are finding type two diabetes. We hope to first develop a registry of all children in the three countries, as we mentioned Jamaica, St. Lucia and Belize who have diabetes whatever form it is and then we want to be able to form support groups to help them to understand their situation. There are some issues related to diabetes I mean adolescence itself is a big problem. Just going through adolescence and imagine having a chronic disease along with it so just to identify some of the psycho social issues that may be affecting these children and to form support group, not just for the children but also with their families. So we want to form community support groups with them. The ultimate thing we wasn’t to do is to develop guidelines for the management of these children because treating children with diabetes is much different from treating adults so we want to develop guidelines that are culturally specific because there are guidelines in the US, in Europe but even when you adapt it to our situation, sometimes it don’t work so we want to develop culturally specific guidelines and then disseminate it throughout the Caribbean so that is the last step that we will be having and doing workshops with the health professionals who are involved.” The target audience in this project is zero to twenty four years of age and Mcfarlane says that they plan to look at over two hundred and fifty children from across Belize. The project is being funded by the World Diabetes Foundation. LoveFM NOTICES &
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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