Djamila Cabral, who spoke to journalists after a meeting with the Minister of Finance, Vera Daves, pointed out that the COVAX mechanism - which includes, among other partners, the Global Alliance of Vaccines, GAVI, an entity presided over by the former Prime Minister, was addressed. Portugal's Minister José Manuel Durão Barroso - a vaccination plan is also being prepared.
COVAX aims to acquire two billion doses of vaccines for covid-19 by the end of 2021 for 92 beneficiary countries. Angola, being one of the countries subscribing to the mechanism, will benefit from this support in accessing vaccines.
"Right now, the work that is being done is to gather all the funds needed to buy vaccines to cover at least 20 percent of the population in African countries," said Djamila Cabral.
"We are working with the Ministry of Health to prepare the vaccination plan", he continued, saying that there are already instruments that allow an evaluation of the vaccination capacity and the cold chain - one of the challenges to be solved - as well as the definition of priority populations.
The WHO official stressed that "there are still no vaccines to send to Angola" and that the mechanism itself provides for a hierarchy, depending on the needs of each country.
"There are countries that are in need more than others, there are countries where more people are dying than in others," he noted, adding that Angola's figures suggest that it is not one of the hardest hit by the pandemic, as it is not among the countries with more cases.
"The estimate that is being made is that, from the second quarter, we can start receiving [vaccines] in the countries that are in greatest need in the African region", which is not yet fully defined, as are the costs.
According to Djamila Cabral, for now the mechanism intends to buy the vaccines to donate, but "it is possible that, at some point, some contribution will be requested".
The WHO representative admitted that "there was a tendency" to forget other diseases due to covid-19, especially at the beginning of the pandemic, but now everyone is "aware that it is necessary to reinforce other areas", namely malaria, tuberculosis, HIV / AIDS and maternal and child health.
"All of these areas need reinforcement and we will try to respond in the best way to support the Angolan government", and an analysis of the most deficient services is currently being carried out.
Djamila Cabral praised the Executive's effort to increase funds for health in the State Budget, although they are still below desirable, saying that "alternatives that may exist to guarantee health financing and the investments that are made have also been discussed. today they can be maintained and serve the needs of the population ".
Vera Daves reinforced, on the other hand, that there is alignment, on the part of the executive, with the WHO recommendations to progressively increase resources for the social sector despite the limitations from the budgetary point of view.
"We intend, as we have more resources, that the debt service will be decreasing, we will increasingly allocate more funds to the social sector, with an emphasis on health," he said.
In addition, the Ministry of Finance has been encouraging the use of the service portal for public institutes "to make spending execution more transparent and monitored when revenues are donations," he added.
Angola records 348 deaths and 15,139 cases of covid-19.
