The Panamanian Ministry of Health has completed its inspections and has agreed to lift the suspension of works on expanding the thermoelectric plant being managed by Pan Am Generating in La Chorrera in West Panama.
The inspection enabled verification that there is no evidence of noise and air pollution in the areas of expansion of the power plant, as reported by the authorities of the Ministry of Health, who requested that the National Environment Authority authorize reactivation of the construction work.
The Ministry of Health is evaluating whether to use private companies to outsource the service of distributing medicines for public hospitals.
Due to the lack of capacity to supply medicines to national hospitals, the Health Ministry has said it plans to privatize the distribution process of the drugs. In order to realize this project they argue that it is necessary to remove central storage and update the basic list of medicines.
A bill in Costa Rica aims to force all restaurant chains to include nutrition information on their food menus.
The bill states that the measure would apply only to the franchises which have more than five affiliated branches and aims to raise awareness of the amount of fat, sodium and sugar in the food on offer. If the initiative is approved, the menus will have to provide calorie information for dishes in a general format.
An announcement has been made that from March food businesses will be able to register with the Ministry of Health online, and from 2016 they will be able to digitally register products.
From a statement issued by the Salvadoran Association of Industries (ASI):
The Salvadoran Industry Association, ASI, held an informative conference on changes in the procedures for registration of food, in order to inform entrepreneurs about the improvements that the Department of Environmental Health, Ministry of Health has made in the procedure for registering both locally produced and imported food.
The Ministry of Health has announced that it is preparing for the end of January the purchase of medicines worth approximately $23 million.
The strategic plan that the Ministry of Health aims to implement in 2015 not only includes the purchase of medicines but also their distribution and use. It is expected that the process for purchasing and distributing the medicines will be started by the end of this month .
The new rules include packaged foods with high levels of nutrients considered critical such as salt, sugar, saturated fat and calories.
From an article by the Costa Rican Trade Promotion Office (PROCOMER):
The undersecretary of Public Health in Chile, Jorge Diaz, has unveiled the new rules in the law on food labeling. The document sets out how warnings should be placed on packaged foods with high levels of nutrients considered critical, such as salt, sugar, saturated fat and calories, the rules of which will be subject to public consultation on the website of the Ministry of Health.
A new tender will be launched in three weeks, with corrections to the administrative errors that caused this cancellation.
The bidding process was declared void because there was no publication in the official newspaper La Gaceta as required by law.
"It has been explained that because of a point of law there was no advance publication in La Gaceta and this formality, which is fundamental, makes it necessary to restart the process at the earliest opportunity," said German Enamorado, a Human rights public prosecutor.
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