International Grants
Hillside Healthcare Center
Mercy Care Center
Facts About Belize
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 Hillside
Healthcare Center
Eldridgeville, Belize, Central America
Sisters of Mercy Ministries (SMM) has actively supported the people
of Belize through grant funding and varied consultation from Sisters
of Mercy Health System staff for more than 10 years. This commitment
has been targeted primarily to Mercy Care Center, which operates
in Belize City. In June 2001, after seeing Hillside Healthcare
Center during a visit to Punta Gorda in Belize’s southernmost Toledo
district, Sisters of Mercy Ministries initiated discussions
with Jericho Road Foundation International (JRFI). Sisters
of Mercy Ministries joined the partnership late in 2001 after realizing
that the Medical College of Wisconsin and JRFI shared similar values
and operating philosophies regarding community service to people
who are economically poor.
Hillside Healthcare Center provides primary healthcare services
from a clinic that was built in 1999, located a few miles from Punta
Gorda (the Toledo district’s principal town) in the village of Eldridgeville. In
addition to the clinic, medical volunteers visit the homebound to
deliver healthcare services and conduct mobile visits in specific
rural villages to care for people who are unable to access Hillside’s
clinic location. Hillside also provides health education services
and community outreach activities to strengthen relationships among
the villagers who come from multi-ethnic backgrounds.
Hillside Healthcare Center provides all of its services in conjunction
with the Belize Ministry of Health. The Healthcare center seeks
to provide continuity of care in all of its services by maintaining
a dependable schedule of times for service availability and maintaining
medical records on all of its clients. No fees are charged for services
or medications. As of May of 2004, 900 patients a month were being
seen by the combined services of the Healthcare Center with significant
growth occurring monthly.
For more information on Hillside Healthcare Center, please
visit their Web site at www.hillsidebelize.net. To learn about SMM’s
partners in Hillside Healthcare Center, visit the Medical College
of Wisconsin’s Web site at www.family.mcw.edu/belize.htm
or JRFI’s Web site at www.jrfi.org.
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Mercy Care Center
Housed on a shared campus in Belize City are two programs serving
the needs of Belize City's economically poor. These programs,
known collectively as Mercy Care Center, are comprised of Mercy Kitchen
and St. Joseph Mercy Clinic. Their operations are outlined below.
Mercy Kitchen (The Kitchen):
Mercy Kitchen was founded in 1987 through the generosity of a wealthy
businessman who was deeply troubled after encountering a fellow colleague
who had fallen on hard times and become homeless. Upon realizing
that there was no place to refer his friend for a hot meal, the businessman
made his first contribution to the development of Mercy Kitchen.
Since its inception, the Kitchen has had no shortage of guests. Mercy
Kitchen remains the sole provider of daily meals to the elderly poor
and homeless in Belize City, and accepts referrals routinely from
the government hospital and Belize Social Welfare Department. In 2001,
the Kitchen began a home-delivered meal component. Meals are
delivered to those guests who have become too frail to visit the Kitchen
and are at risk of malnutrition. In addition to nutrition services,
Mercy Kitchen provides socialization activities, spiritual enrichment
programs as well as bath and laundry facilities for the homeless.
Mercy Kitchen served 18,252 meals in 2003 comprised of breakfast,
lunch and home deliveries. The delivery component continues to grow
as more of the elderly population becomes homebound.
St. Joseph's Mercy Clinic (SJMC):
Dating back to 1957, the clinic provides holistic primary health and
human services to persons 60 years and older who live at or below
the poverty level. The only specialty geriatric facility in Belize,
SJMC is open five days a week from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Services provided
include outpatient primary healthcare, health education, home nursing
visits and palliative care. In addition to clinic visits and
an in-house pharmacy, SJMC provides basic diagnostic procedures such
as glucose testing, blood pressure screening, hemoglobin testing,
and ECG testing. Case management includes referrals and follow-up
to specialty clinics, government lab/radiology, Belize Council for
the Visually Impaired (for eye care) and transfers to the government
hospital's emergency room.
SJMC has a multidisciplinary staff of 14 with nine volunteers. In
2001, the staff was expanded to include a social worker.
The clinic treated 2,470 patients in 2003 and conducted 2,353 home
visits. The majority of the patients seen at both the outpatient
clinic and during home visits were females in the 70- to 79-year-old
age range.
The need to care for the Belizian elderly is increasingly evident
where scarce resources have traditionally been targeted to help younger
populations. Mercy Care Center remains a strong advocate for elderly
care and played a key role in the development of Belize's newly adopted
National Policy for Older Persons.
For more information on Mercy Care Center, please contact Mrs. Marva
Nicholas at 011-501-22-30344 or e-mail her at mercyclin@btl.net.
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Facts
about Belize
- Belize (formerly British Honduras) is about the size of Massachusetts
with a population of nearly 250,000 and nearly 300 miles of Caribbean
coastline.
- It is the only Central American country with English as the
language of commerce and education.
- It has the largest barrier reef in the Western Hemisphere.
- The climate is tropical, hot and humid with a rainy season from
May to February (200 inches of rain fall annually in the south).
- Life expectancy is 68 years.
- 62 percent of the country is Catholic.
- Economy is based primarily on agriculture with emergent tourism
trade on the Cayes.
- Currency (Belize dollar) is pegged to the U.S. dollar. (One
U.S. dollar equals two Belize dollars.)
- There is a significant incidence of moderate to severe malnutrition.
- Road travel is difficult at best, with unfinished roadways and
seasonal flooding that washes out the roads leaving them impassable.
- Average Belizean household income is $7,500 to $8,500 annually.
- Public transportation is erratic at best since buses are old
and subject to mechanical breakdowns.
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