The director of Hospital Sanatório de Luanda, Carlos Masseca, was this Tuesday a speaker at the 1st Conference on "Pandemic Management in Africa: The case of Angola", promoted by NC-Consultorius, having addressed the topic "Pandemic and Integrated Management of Health Services in Large Hospital Units".
At the end of the conference, in statements to the Lusa agency, Carlos Masseca said that a comparison was made of the numbers of people who sought services in 2018, 2019 and 2020, and it was found that last year a reduction of almost 50 percent was recorded.
"It is true that we have to study what the factors are, but I think there are multiple causes, and it is a direct impact of the pandemic, in our view," he noted.
According to Carlos Masseca, "people stopped looking for health services, either because of lack of information or lack of data.
"We didn't close the health units, fear may have taken hold of people at some point, which led them not to go to the health units, thinking that the health units could be the main center of contamination and contagion, and also issues that came later, such as [decreased] transportation and other factors. We can say that it is a set of factors, but it is a reflection of the pandemic situation," he said.
According to the hospital's data, in 2018, 92,422 people were seen, in 2019, the number reduced to 72,731 people, and in 2020, it dropped to 38,685 users.
Already in the first half of this year, that health facility, which treats patients with tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS, recorded the attendance of 27,497 people.
"We are observing another phenomenon. (...) We are already at numbers very close to those seen overall last year, but the quality of the patients, in terms of the state in which they arrive, arrive in very poor conditions," he stressed.
The hospital official said that patients with tuberculosis and HIV "arrive in very bad conditions, which may mean that the lack of assistance last year is being reflected in the work today".
Asked to comment on complaints about the lack of medicines for the treatment of tuberculosis in the first phase, Carlos Masseca said that the hospital unit he directs has medicines.
"We still have medicines, at this moment there is a process of acquisition of medicines by the ministry for us to continue the treatment. In relation to the sanatorium hospital I can say that we currently have medicines," he stressed.
"And we believe that in the near future we will receive the necessary reinforcement so that we can continue to provide assistance to our users", he said, avoiding the scenario of a complete rupture, considering that if the people who have already started to be treated have an interruption, one of the consequences may be the development of resistance.
Carlos Masseca expressed confidence that in the near future, with the tenders that were recently held, the country will have medicines to give continuity of care to patients with tuberculosis.
In what refers to covid-19, the director of the Sanatorium Hospital of Luanda said that a specific center was created to attend cases of the new coronavirus, which has already registered situations of the kind, that is, patients with tuberculosis and with covid-19.
