12 October 2008
Maputo — Mozambican Health Minister Ivo Garrido and the governor of Maputo [province, Telmina Pereira, on Friday laid the first stone for the Maputo provincial hospital, which will be the largest hospital built in the country since independence in 1975.
Maputo is the only one of the ten provinces that does not have its own provincial hospital. As a result, seriously ill people in the province tend to go to Maputo Central Hospital in Maputo city, putting great pressure on this health unit.
The new hospital is being built in the Matola C neighbourhood of the industrial city of Matola, which adjoins Maputo. It will contain all the wards required for a reference hospital, a laboratory for medical tests, three operating theatres and a morgue. There will be beds for 400 patients.
According to the head of the Infrastructure Department of the Health Ministry, Joao Alexandre, the new hospital will have a work force of 400, including 30 doctors and 150 nurses.
The budget for the provincial hospital is 9.5 million US dollars. Of this sum, seven million is for the construction work, and 2.5 million for the equipment. The hospital is expected to be ready by 2010.
The Mozambican state is participating in the funding with 500,000 dollars. The OPEC Fund is donating five million dollars, while the remaining four million has been pledged by the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA).
Speaking to reporters, Garrido said this will be the first new provincial hospital since independence. The other nine all existed under other names, and were converted to provincial hospitals.
"This hospital will benefit the people of Maputo Province in particular, and that of Maputo City", he said. It would "decongest Maputo Central Hospital", which currently deals with all the more complicated cases.
Pereira said the new hospital will reduce the difficulties experienced by the people of the province, who currently have to make their way to Maputo City to find a health unit with modern diagnostic facilities.
"Our province was the only one without a provincial hospital, and so today is a day of great joy to the people of Maputo province", she said.
The contractor, Cybersonic, a Mozambican-registered company with Chinese capital, has 15 days to mobilise the building equipment needed and to start work, and 17 months to finish the job.
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