14 January 2008
Maputo — More than 600 Mozambican patients were transferred abroad in 2007 to receive treatment for conditions that the National Health Service was unable to cope with, Health Minister Ivo Garrido announced on Monday.
Garrido was speaking at the ceremony that swore into office a new four-member National Health Council, the body which decides on such transfers.
He added that his figures only reflect cases considered by the Council, and thus does not include Mozambicans who went abroad for treatment on their own initiative, or whose treatment was paid for by their employers or other institutions.
The new Council, Garrido said, was selected on the basis of scientific standards, professional experience, and the members "sense of ethics, justice and common sense".
The new Council has a budget of four million US dollars to be spent on transporting and treating patients abroad. The Council will also take responsibility for treating inside the country certain patients for whose conditions the drugs are not normally available in public health units. Garrido did not announce how much money the previous Council had spent in 2007.
The pathologies that most frequently lead to transferring patients abroad are renal, heart and eye problems. Most of these patients are treated in South Africa.
In addition to deciding on transfers abroad, the Council also ratifies decisions taken by health workers concerned medical treatment for civil servants and their families, and advises the Minister.
Garrido also told reporters, that, although a cholera epidemic is raging in several parts of Mozambique, notably in Maputo and the neighbouring city of Matola, so far not a single case of cholera has been detected in the accommodation and resettlement centres established for victims of the current flooding in the centre of the country.
He warned that this situation could change at any moment - but so far the centres are free of cholera. Doubtless this is in large measure due to the care taken in installing improved latrines, and sources of clean drinking water for those displaced by the floods.
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