Maputo — Former Mozambican Prime Minister Pascoal Mocumbi died in Maputo on Saturday morning, at the age of 82, after a prolonged illness.

Mocumbi was born in Maputo on 10 April 1941, and became a founder member of the National Union of Mozambican Students (UNEMO), rising to become general secretary and deputy chairperson of this student organization.

In 1960, he left Mozambique for Lisbon where he enrolled in the Medical Faculty of the University of Lisbon. He was involved in nationalist politics, which attracted the attention of the Portuguese political police, the PIDE.

This forced Mocumbi to leave Portugal for France, where he continued his medical studies at the University of Poitiers.

In 1962, he went to Tanzania, where he became a founder member of the Mozambique Liberation Front (Frelimo).

In 1967 he entered the University of Lausanne, in Switzerland, where he completed his training as a doctor in 1973. In 1975, he obtained a diploma in health planning in the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

On his return to Mozambique, after independence in 1975, Mocumbi worked in hospitals in Maputo and Beira. He was director of the Jose Macamo General Hospital in Maputo, and then director of health in the central province of Sofala.

He was appointed Minister of Health in 1980, and held this post until 1987, when President Joaquim Chissano appointed him Foreign Minister.

He was Chissano's Prime Minister from 1994 to 2004, when he applied, unsuccessfully, for the post of General Director of the World Health Organisation (WHO).

He became High Representative of the European and Developing Countries Clinical Trials Partnership (EDCTP), which decided to institute the "Pascoal Mocumbi Prize' in honour of the former Prime Minister.

Meeting in extraordinary session a few hours after Mocumbi's death, the Council of Ministers (Cabinet) decided to grant him an official funeral, the date of which has yet to be announced.

There will be two days of national mourning as from zero hours on the day of the funeral.