Moroccan Doctors Offer Services to More Than 500 Patients in Angola

Rabat – An estimated 511 Angolan patients benefited from free check-ups, medical care, and surgeries from a caravan of 24 Moroccan doctors in six different specialties.

The medical care sessions took place from March 1 to March 6 at the Luanda General Hospital in Angola.

The initiative falls under a partnership between the Angolan Office of the First Lady and the Saham Foundation, a Moroccan think-tank.

The deployed specialties in the medical caravan included ENT (ears, nose, and throat), ophthalmology, urology, gynecology, and general and pediatric surgery.

Following the Angolan first lady’s meeting with the caravan of Moroccan doctors, a spokesperson for the Angolan Ministry of Health, Agostinho Matamba, said at a press conference that most of the surgeries were pediatric (145) and, to a lesser extent, urological (26).

The president of the Saham Foundation and the former Minister of Economy, Moulay Hafid Elalamy, created the social think-tank in 2013 to provide marginalized societies with medical help and sensibilization.

The foundation has benefitted 32,926 people, including 290 medical surgeries conducted by 250 volunteering doctors.

Meanwhile, Morocco’s Health Ministry released a report in November 2019, unveiling the dire prospects of the country’s health sector.

The report shows a shortage of doctors in Morocco, with the current number of doctors vastly inferior to the 32,000 needed for the sector to effectively operate.

Moroccan hospitals also suffer from a worrying deficit of medical personnel, lacking 64,774 nurses and other medical practitioners.

The report presented a solution to the deficit: Recruiting 62,000 new employees, including 12,000 doctors and 50,000 nurses and medical technicians.

However, the Moroccan Ministry of Health’s total budget of $1.9 billion for the 2020 fiscal year can only recruit 4,000 new employees.