João Lourenço spoke to the press at the end of the inauguration ceremony of a new wing of the Emergency Service, Short-Term Internment, External Consultation and Luanda Day Hospital for Pediatrics.
“This unit we just opened represents an important step in solving the health problems of the population, in particular our child”, said João Lourenço, about this extension of the Pediatric Hospital David Bernardino, composed of four buildings, with a capacity of 135 beds, including 47 for intensive care and 19 for neonatology.
The head of state acknowledged that having only one “so well equipped” unit in the capital will make children from not only the different municipalities of Luanda, but even from the nearest provinces, “come and end up overcrowding the capacities of these facilities, with the danger of their rapid degradation ”.
“What we have just seen we think makes us all proud. Whoever visited the emergency bank at the Pediatric Hospital David Bernardino, compare what it was and what it is ”, he said.
According to João Lourenço, infrastructures such as these can be replicated in other municipalities and other provinces, the dimension of which is only debatable.
In her speech, the Minister of Health, Sílvia Lutucuta, said that as of this date, children can receive differentiated assistance in an emergency regime, external consultation and day hospital.
The minister took the opportunity to thank the companies, among them the Portuguese Mota-Engil, Omatapalo and Casais, who, free of charge, within the scope of their social responsibility, rehabilitated the four buildings.
"We have a dream here that has become a reality for differentiated treatment in emergency, outpatient, day hospital and, above all, we have won the largest pediatric intensive care unit in the history of our country, with 47 beds," he said.
The director-general of the Pediatric Hospital David Bernardino, Francisco Domingos, stressed that that reference unit in the country, which provides preventive, curative and rehabilitation health care to children with medium and high complexity pathologies, had a capacity of 422 beds .
According to Francisco Domingos, the pediatric hospital was divided into three main buildings and four secondary ones, including an emergency block of precarious construction, adapted from the old morgue of Hospital Maria Pia, which was always overcrowded.
"Often with two children in the same bed, added to the terrible working conditions, which, even with the superhuman effort of their professionals, was not a welcoming environment, nor suitable for our children", he described.
The new unit has four buildings, with building I comprising screening, emergency, intensive care, imaging services, laboratories and short-term inpatient wards.
Building II is for external consultations of various specialties and a day hospital, building III for the social area of professionals and building IV serves as a shelter for companions, mostly mothers.
The complex has a capacity of 135 beds, 47 for intensive care, including 19 for neonatology, with six incubators, three of which with phototherapy equipment.
"Each bed in the emergency and intensive care wards is equipped with a fan, a reader and infusion pumps and syringes," said the clinician.
At the level of complementary diagnostic tests, imaging has a portable X-ray and, soon, it will have a TAC device already ordered, as well as a laboratory for hematology, biochemistry and microbiology, and another for virology, a hemotherapy service. and internal and external pharmacy.
A total of 112 professionals, consisting of 13 doctors, 50 nurses, 18 therapeutic diagnostic technicians, 22 from hospital support and 11 from the general regime, will reinforce the new unit, which will also be dedicated to the training of new admitted health technicians and other institutions.
