Speaking to Lusa, Job Monteiro, coordinator and technical manager of the human resources training project at the Ministry of Health (Minsa), said that the initiative is part of the Ministry of Health's emergency staff training plan, which aims to cover 38,000 professionals from various careers in four years.
Of these 38,000 professionals, 3000 must be doctors, 9000 specialized nurses, 9000 nursing technicians, 9000 diagnostic and therapy technicians, 4000 general regime professionals and 4000 hospital support professionals.
Most of this training, according to Job Monteiro, will be done in Angola and only 20 percent should do the specialty outside Angola, with Portugal being one of the chosen countries, under a cooperation agreement signed between the Health Ministries of Portugal and Angola.
"This agreement foresees that we will have to specialize in the next four years in Portugal, with internships in different areas and different careers in the sector, 630 professionals", he added.
The first steps will begin to be taken with the 117 final year doctors of the General and Family Medicine course who, next week, will be distributed across several health units, to carry out professional internships of up to 3 months in Portugal.
Job Monteiro said that 136 health professionals are in Cuba and another 111 recently left for Brazil.
"The division that was made from the point of view of training priority was between priority areas, areas in need and emergency areas", indicated the person in charge of Minsa, explaining that the priority areas are those in which Angola already offers specialist courses, so they will only travel to Portugal for short-term internships.
The areas in need, such as neurosurgery, neurology, orthotraumatology or nephrology, are those in which it is not possible to fulfill the entire rotational program of the specialty, while emergency areas mean the almost total absence of specialists, as is the case of medically assisted reproduction or transplants.
The Angolan doctors from this first contingent will leave for Portugal on different flights, but from next Monday they will be in 16 health units where they will carry out their professional internship, in conjunction with local teams.
