João Lourenço was speaking to the press after inaugurating the "Dr. Manuel Pedro de Azancot de Menezes" Mother and Child Hospital, an infrastructure located in the Camama district, south of the capital, a ten-storey building, three of which are underground, which occupies an area of 40,484 square meters, with clinical emergency services, delivery room, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, physiotherapy and physical rehabilitation and surgery.
"The impression I have is that, little by little, we are realizing the dream of offering better health care to the Angolan people, with the inauguration of a set of very well equipped hospital units capable of treating all types of diseases" , said João Lourenço.
The head of state stressed that the new hospital unit was built to serve "a very sensitive target group, which is women, but above all pregnant women and children".
"In this unit, we have practically two in one, we have a maternity unit and integrated with a pediatrics unit, in the same place we care for the mother and the baby", said the President, stressing that the Government's plan "is being implemented little by little".
"And I believe that, in the coming years, the work that we will leave in the health sector will not be neglected", he stressed.
João Lourenço said that he was "happy" to hear from the Minister of Health that the trend is for Angola to increasingly reduce infant mortality.
"For any government official this is quite good, since we have an obligation to work in the sense that there are no human losses at birth", he observed.
According to the head of state, other provinces should also benefit from hospital infrastructure, which is already happening, with the recent opening of large hospitals in Bié, Namibe and Cabinda.
"The attention is not focused only on Luanda, it would be wrong to do so, it is clear that Luanda will always end up with a little more, but it is understandable, Luanda has almost 10 million inhabitants, no other province has this population, it is normal that the needs of Luanda are [great], because they are greater, they deserve another kind of attention", he stressed.
João Lourenço highlighted that Luanda will also have two more large hospitals in the municipalities of Viana and Cacuaco.
"That fit in the spirit of what I have just said, for a city like Luanda the current hospitals are few. In addition to this there are Viana and Cacuaco", he said.
To health professionals, João Lourenço thanked their voluntary delivery, "demonstrated mainly in the phase of fighting the covid-19 pandemic", praising the young staff who "are working authentic miracles".
"We see this at Hospital Josina Machel with the surgeries they have been doing, now more recently at Hospital do Coração e do Pulmão D. Alexandre do Nascimento, we have a very young team of cardiologists there who have performed true miracles, so it's a word of thanks for everything they have done, we know that there will be one or another case in which professionals do not respect humane care for populations very much, but the tendency is to put an end to that", he said.
In the infrastructure, according to information provided by Angop, more than 179 million dollars were invested, coming from a credit line from Standard Chartered Bank.
The tertiary hospital also has a unit for burn patients, respiratory therapy, laboratories for clinical analyses, an imaging and radiodiagnosis system, a morgue and a parking lot for 520 vehicles.
