Photo: Dr. Javier Novelo, medical officer at the Belize Central Prison

by Charles Gladden

BELIZE CITY, Wed. Mar. 1, 2023

In April of this year, the Belize Central Prison will be representing the country at the Epidemic Intelligence Services (EIS) Conference in Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America, where it will present its research on COVID-19 management at the prison.

The research was submitted by prison medical officer, Dr. Javier Novelo in November of last year and was selected, along with submissions from 7 other countries. Dr. Novelo’s 16-page research paper reviews how the prison was able to limit the virus’s spread while utilizing minimal resources and assistance from inmates.

“We successfully mitigated COVID. The study was done from 2020 to 2022, and what was unique about the paper is that we have an inmate-based workforce, an inmate-based workforce at the medic center. Because we have limited resources here in the prison, we have inmates that help us work, and that is why this paper is unique, and that is why I believe it is one of the papers that they selected to present,” Dr. Novelo said.

Dr. Novelo further explained, “I started that in September of last year and ended in November. I submitted the paper through a training that I am doing with collaboration – the Ministry of Health collaborates with the prison and it collaborated with COMISCA, which is a community of public health ministries in the Caribbean. They’re doing a training program for public officers and other individuals as myself here in Belize. I am doing that training, and through that training for epidemiology is how I got to submit the paper … When I did this paper and submitted it, I liked that it would eventually showcase to an international body. These are countries from all over the world that submit their papers, and Belize, which is a small country in the Caribbean, won one of the papers, so this makes me very proud and honored.”

When there was an outbreak of the virus at the prison, the number of cases was almost in the triple digits. CEO of the Kolbe Foundation, Virgilio Murillo noted to local reporters that in a congested atmosphere such as the prison, the likelihood of having outbreaks is high.

“One of the things with the prison environment is that it’s hard to social distance. This is a very congregated environment, and a prisoner does not have any choice. They have to stay where they are housed, and if it is four in there or five, or whatever the number is, they have no choice. When an infection comes to the prison or gets in the prison, the likelihood of spreading and spreading like a bushfire is very high … I remember ninety-eight cases being recorded in one day. So, that was a scare, and we had to do everything possible to mitigate that spread. And in no time, we managed to flatten the curve on that one,” Murillo said.

Belize is the only country selected from within the region to present a research paper at the conference.