"What we have been observing is that our Government invests in the tertiary health system, which is the curative health system, when it should invest in the preventive health system, this is our concern", said Adriano Manuel, at a conference in press in Luanda.
For the pediatrician, if Angola wants to invest in the preventive health system, it must invest in the primary health system and in human resources, but the pyramid of priorities of the Government of Angola is inverted.
Adriano Manuel, who was quite critical of the Government's "heavy investments" for the construction of tertiary level hospitals, also referred that "no country in the world has improved its health condition without investing in the primary system".
"Because it is at the level of the primary system where we are going to diagnose that can evolve to chronicity, such as hypertension, diabetes, which when properly diagnosed in the primary system do not evolve to kidney failure", he pointed out.
"If we have an organized health system, the state does not spend a lot of money on creating hemodialysis centers because treating a patient with chronic renal failure is much more costly than preventing it", he maintained.
Adriano Manuel, a pediatrician who has been suspended for 18 months for denouncing the deaths of around 20 children at the Pediatric Hospital of Luanda, where he worked, was speaking at a press conference in which the professionals' strike was announced as of 6 December.
The doctor also criticized the budget from the State General Budget (OGE) 2022 allocated to the "Born Livre para Brilhar" campaign, which according to the union leader "is budgeted at more than 5 billion kwanzas against the budget of less than 1 billion kwanzas dedicated to to the program to fight malaria".
The "Born Free to Shine" campaign, supervised by the first lady, Ana Dias Lourenço, was launched in December 2018, in Moxico province, east of the country, and aims to reduce the rate of Angolan children born with HIV/AIDS .
"We are disturbed, for example, at next year's OGE, to observe that the 'Born Free to Shine' program alone has more than 5 billion kwanzas, when the first cause of mortality in the country, which is malaria, has less than 1 billion kwanzas," he noted.
"It is no secret to you that, with the advent of unemployment in our country, hunger has increased and, in this way, the number of malnourished patients and tuberculosis patients has increased", he added, questioning "how can a program that even could be added to the National Program for the Fight against AIDS, it has more than five billion kwanzas and tuberculosis less than one and a half billion kwanzas".
In his intervention, the president of Sinmea also warned of the "flight of better cadres (doctors) from the civil service to the private sector, in search of better wages and work".
