Doctors have been on strike since the 6th of this month, for an indefinite period, and this Friday the president of Sinmea, Adriano Manuel, stressed, in a press conference, that the point of disagreement of the medical class, at the last meeting, was exactly the issue of working conditions.
"We continue to see people dying without the assistance that we should give, we continue to observe at the level of primary health care an absolute lack of any means, both from the point of view of human resources, diagnostic material and others", he said.
The union leader stressed that the medical class is concerned about the scarcity of material in the periphery, when "observing the construction of new highly equipped hospitals, when the ideal would be to improve primary care".
"We, as a union, defend that what leads to the high mortality rate in our country is related to primary health care," said Manuel, noting that in Angola the pyramid is invested from the point of view of priority.
According to the president of Sinmea, "any country, however robust it may be, if it does not prioritize primary health care, even if they build large hospitals, what is always observed is a high mortality rate".
"As long as we are investing heavily in the tertiary health system and neglecting the primary health system, we will not improve the health of our country and we will absolutely continue to have a high mortality rate in our hospitals", he reiterated.
Doctors, he continued, are concerned about the lack of ambulances to transport the seriously ill, as seen in almost all municipal hospitals.
"It is sad that we see young people undergoing a hysterectomy because this young woman did not have an ambulance to take her to a more referenced hospital, and she was definitely unable to have a child. It is sad to observe the lack of blood in secondary hospitals, the lack of medication. We have colleagues in secondary hospitals who have to wash gloves to perform the next surgery for lack of gloves in the hospital, colleagues who use sutures for the skin on massive organs, such as the spleen, liver, because there are no specific ones," he said.
The union also defends that the State should subsidize drugs for chronic diseases, to substantially reduce the number of patients with renal failure, instead of the investments that have been made in recent years in hemodialysis centers.
"And treating a patient with renal failure costs the State more than the State subsidizing the drugs for their treatment. The State does not spend less than 100,000 kwanzas for each hemodialysis session, but if it subsidizes the drugs, it may not spend more than 15 to 20 thousand kwanzas per month and a patient undergoes three sessions a week", he explained.
The union leader said that "the medical class is worried about all this" and asks the Government for a time horizon "so that the minimum conditions are created" to practice medicine with quality.
"This is a point of disagreement that we want to believe that today, that we are going to have a meeting with the Ministry of Health, that we will be able to overcome this situation if there is good will to resolve this issue", he stressed.
The president of Sinmea stressed that another issue that afflicts the class is wage and social conditions, namely housing, with colleagues, for example in Zaire province, who live in poorly built houses, "who live in terrible poverty".
For the union, the salary issue is very serious, considering the volume of work they face.
"A person who studies 13 years and has a salary of 250 thousand kwanza is not justified when we find in the country people who only study for five years and, however, with given conditions that doctors do not have", he said.
The delay in replacing the union president, who has been away from his job for a year and nine months, the annulment of his disciplinary proceedings and compensation, is another point of contention, the first in the list of claims.
Adriano Manuel was transferred to human resources at the Ministry of Health and subject to disciplinary proceedings after denouncing to the press the death of 19 children out of a total of 24 in the emergency room of the Pediatric Hospital David Bernardino.
"The union is willing to talk, we will continue to dialogue with the Government, but we would like the Government to be more flexible in relation to the issues that afflict the medical profession, the salary issue must be addressed in some depth, because otherwise we are going to lose more and more the best doctors in the public service to the private ones", he stressed.
Adriano Manuel expressed his confidence that the meeting will find ways to overcome the strike issue in a short period of time.
"The strike only existed because, unfortunately, we were cut off from the possibility of dialogue", referred the president of Sinmea.
