Angola will stop sending patients to Portugal

The Angolan Ministry of Health has ordered in a dispatch the suspension of sending patients and companions to be treated in Portugal and the closure, within six months, of this service.

According to the order, dated June 9, signed by the Minister of Health, Sílvia Lutucuta, the Angolan State made investments in differentiated and highly complex treatment in the country, with strategic partnerships with world-renowned institutions, reinforcing the diagnostic and therapeutic capacity for the reversal of the joint.

“In this sense, the creation of administrative and financial conditions for the closure of the health sector in Portugal within a period of six months is underway”, the document states.

The order states that all medical situations that still require additional treatment, after careful evaluation, may be treated in the health sector in South Africa.

In 2021, the Angolan government announced the closure of the health board in Portugal, after an audit, which concluded that there had been several abuses in the use of this mechanism.

At the time, Sílvia Lutucuta said that the national health board began operating shortly after independence, a time when assistance was difficult and Angola began cooperation with Portugal and other countries.

“Many of these sectors have been closed for several years and, in relation to Portugal, this is not the first time that we have had to take this closure measure,” Lutucuta said at the time, indicating that the sector was closed in 1984, reestablished and reopened in 1990.

Since then, he added, 9,360 patients and 5,250 companions have been treated at the hospital, “an incalculable investment with an average annual expenditure of over 6 million euros”.