A Comprehensive SSA Report Current Status of Cancer Control in Belize

Abstract

Background: Belizeans have been severely affected by cancer, noted by the rising mortality rates. Health disparities, health inequities and issues with systemic health access are some of the pre-existing problems. One of the significant issues in small countries is often the downplay of cancer control and the lack of a cancer continuum of care through a national cancer control plan. It has been estimated that over 80% of countries have developed national cancer control plans. However, the central issue that presented a significant barrier was the successful launch of implementing the plan. There is a great need to assess and evaluate those implementation barriers to overcome this impediment. Objective: 1. To determine what critical government plans and policies are in place to gear towards the country’s specific barriers to reducing cancer incidence. An assessment of the latter was conducted. 2. To determine whether the multisectoral approach was present within Belize’s governance structure for cancer control. Methodology: With the use of 2 approaches that were complementary to each other. 1st Approach: Questionnaire-grid: ‘snap-shot’ of the government responses to cancer in Belize. 2nd Approach: EOH’S APPROACH TO STAKEHOLDER ENGAGEMENT Detailed Case Study: Policy response to cancer explored via in-depth, semi-structured interviews EOH’S approach includes: 1. An inclusive approach 2. Materiality 3. Responding Interviews were conducted with key informants from a range of backgrounds: 1. Representatives of the private sectors 2. Specialists 3. Public sectors 3rd Approach: Archival Research to identify prior and current policy documents throughout the years within the MOHW. Together these approaches were cross-linked to enable a detailed analysis of formulated policy and mechanism of assessment of what type of cancer control/surveillance is being used in the delivery of health care for cancer in Belize. In addition, to evaluate if all policies were implemented and successfully launched. This will help to avoid redundancies in cancer control planning and to accelerate the process of launching respective cancer control mechanisms in Belize. Results: This article finds that twenty different types of plans and policies were found in efforts to contribute toward NCD control. Nevertheless, very few policies directly target cancer mortality and morbidity in Belize. There seem to have been issued in implementing these policies(failure to launch successfully) and some procedures that were not explicitly addressing the root issues of the prevalence of cancer. No cancer surveillance system was activated to measure the progress of all Belizeans with cancer. Thus, this is because no national cancer registry was functionally started to capture the various modalities, variables and risk factors of cancer. Conclusion: This stakeholder and situational analysis highlight the disparities in Belize’s healthcare system that disproportionately impacts Belizeans once diagnosed with cancer. This article elucidates the perspective of Belize’s national response to cancer. It highlights the deficiencies or barriers that inhibit successful cancer mitigation—recognizing a great need for cancer control mitigation in Belize through NCCP that provides a continuum of care. To address the country-specific cancer burden, reliable, evidence-based data is needed. Cancer surveillance is the most efficient way of achieving optimum cancer management in the delivery of the cancer healthcare system in Belize