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SSB CEO Counts the Cost of Conjunctivitis
posted (November 9, 2017)
And switching from crime to health now, today we asked the CEO of Social security about that over 1 million dollars in sickness claims that SSB has paid out for the many thousands of insured persons who became ill with conjunctivitis, or pink eye, as it is more commonly known.

As we told you, between September 4 and October 29, 2017, there were a total of 7,852 conjunctivitis claims submitted. The CEO told us that it was an unexpected spike in sickness benefit claims, but the organization comfortably managed it:

Dr. Colin Young - CEO, SSB
"In about 6 weeks starting in the middle of September to the end of October, we had received over 6,000 claims to social security board which resulted in over 34,000 sick days across the population and by now we've spent over 1 million dollars in the payment of claims and we had put out a press release to say as much. This is why we exist. Social security exist when you pay into the fund. When you get sick we ought to pay you your benefit. Sometimes that's the impact on the fund. We are happy to be able to pay out what is due to workers. However, the impact on the country is significantly greater than what we've paid out, because you think about all of those people who are out of work on an average of 5-6 days, that has a significant value to the economy as well. So, epidemics like this one can have a significant impact. It had an impact on our staff. For those 6 weeks, at any one week we were between 30-40 of our staff who were out also with conjunctivitis. So we've learnt from it in terms of how best to deal with it should it happen again in the future. We are noticing that there is a decrease in every district, at least in the claims that come in except for the south. It seems that its juts now getting down there and we see increases in Punta Gorda and Independence and Dangriga, but from the North down to up here in Belmopan and San Ignacio it seems that it's on a decline."

There were 15 times more pink eye sickness claims this year than last year.

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