Africa-Press – Angola. The Municipal Hospital of Porto Amboim, Cuanza Sul province, has been without X-ray services for four years, due to a malfunction in its equipment.
Press found out, during a visit by deputies to the National Assembly, coordinated by Agostinho Domingos Casseça, that the said equipment was assembled in 2011 and at least on four occasions attempts were made to repair it, without success.
On the other hand, the parliamentarians found that the hospital unit, called “Dr António Agostinho Neto, has many cracks and a risk of the ceiling collapsing.
For deputy Armando Kakepa, it is “inconceivable” that a municipal hospital has been without an X-ray service for so long, forcing patients to resort to private services or travel to the General Hospital “17 de Setembro”, in the city of Sumbe, more than 30 kilometers.
The general director of the hospital, Pedro Pompeu, pointed out the need to acquire new X-ray equipment and speed up work on the future municipal hospital.
He referred that the Municipal Hospital of Porto Amboim, which was built in 1941, has eight doctors and needs doctors in the specialties of orthopedics, surgery, gynecologist-obstetricians, paediatrics and internal medicine.
New Hospital
The health unit, which had an execution period of 18 months, costs seven billion 979 million and 600 thousand Kwanzas, for its construction, and Kz 359 million and 82 thousand, referring to inspection, financed by the Integrated Plan of Intervention in Municipalities ( PIIM) by the company Girassonde Lda..
The construction of the new Municipal Hospital, financed by the Ministry of Health, has been running since September 2021 and has a financial and physical execution of zero and 12 percent, respectively, and does not foresee, in its project, the installation of an oxygen, energy electricity and drinking water from the public network.
For this reason, deputy Armando Kakepa wondered “how it is possible for a work of this size to be conceived without installing electricity from the network, water and an oxygen factory”.
The health unit will have a capacity for 90 beds and is being set up in the Lila neighbourhood, in an area of 3,456 square metres, out of a total of 4,285 square metres.
It plans to provide services in gynecology, obstetrics, pediatrics, external consultations, will have two operating rooms, maternity, emergency room, hospitalization, mortuary and administrative area.
For the work’s director, Arlindo Manuel, the first phase began with earthworks, earthworks and geotechnical studies, where resistance to fifteen meters of firm soil was sought, which allowed the construction of the type of foundation for a service life of over 100 years.
For this work (geotechnicians), he clarified, it has a physical execution of 96 percent and financial execution of 48 percent. “Engineering works were not foreseen in the first budget and we had to formalize a new one”, he explained.
The construction of the Municipal Hospital created 100 jobs. And it has been paralyzed for 11 months.
The Municipality of Porto Amboim occupies an area of 3,651 square kilometers and has a population of over 140,000 inhabitants.
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