In a press conference on Monday to claim injustices against the medical class, the president of SINMEA, Adriano Manuel, questioned the commitment that the authorities have with the country, taking into account "the money that was spent to solve, until recently, in the case of the new coronavirus".
"More people die of malaria in the country, of respiratory diseases, of tuberculosis, because of HIV, today we have more and more poor people in our country, and so there is chronic malnutrition, more and more," the doctor recalled.
According to data from the National Programme to Fight Malaria, Angola registered 2548 deaths out of a total of 2,065,673 cases in the first quarter of this year.
For the trade unionist, the government's bet should be on preventive medicine, but on the contrary, the investments are for curative medicine.
"Angolan leaders usually boast about the high hospitals they are building, the high equipment, but what kills in this country are preventable diseases, 95 percent of the pathologies in our country are preventable," he said.
According to Adriano Manuel, never has so much been invested in health during the current governance as it is now.
"An inter-ministerial commission has never been set up to solve the problem of malaria, which is what kills most, of malnutrition, which is what is killing most, but we have a multi-ministerial commission that is investing millions and millions of dollars," said the trade unionist, recalling that a covid-19 patient, according to the Health Minister, costs an average of 16 million kwanzas, while the malaria patient would not cost half.
"And this patient who is in quarantine is asymptomatic, but 16 million kwanzas are spent, this is an aberration, and we have people dying in our hospitals," he said.
The president of SINMEA stressed that he does not neglect the seriousness of the pandemic, however, attention must be paid at the same time to the diseases that kill most in the country.
"It is worth mentioning that Europe has comorbidities that we do not have, that is why they are dying more than us, the diseases of Europe are different from ours", he stressed, reiterating that "it is a lot of money that is being spent on covid-19, leaving out malaria, chronic malnutrition, acute respiratory diseases".
According to the doctor, daily pediatrics in Luanda register an average of five to six deaths and in other hospitals the number is higher.
"Go to the cemeteries and see the entrances, how many corpses enter the cemeteries, none of them are coronaviruses," he stressed.
Since last March, covid-19 has killed six people in the country out of a total of 142 positive cases, with a record of 64 cases recovered, according to data released until Monday by the Angolan authorities.
