"In this question of specialist doctors, the situation is very bad and we are aware that it will take years before we can be satisfied, and this involves a major effort in training", Garrido told AIM.
Currently Mozambique has a total of about 800 doctors, which gives a ratio of one doctor for about 24,000 inhabitants. "This is frankly bad, when we consider that on average the developed countries have one doctor for less than 1,000 inhabitants", said the Minister.
For Garrido, the solution could only lie in finding a sustainable way of increasing the number of Mozambicans training to become doctors. He thus welcomed the recent opening of a new medical faculty, at the Lurio University in the northern city of Nampula.
This supplements the existing medical faculty in Maputo, in the country's oldest university, the Eduardo Mondlane University. Garrido believed that a third public medical faculty will open in the next four years in the central city of Beira {where there is already a privately-owned medical faculty at the Catholic University}.
"This is the most sustainable procedure, to speed up the training of doctors", said Garrido. "But the situation is still so difficult that for the next ten years at least we shall have to resort to specialist doctors from abroad".
As for how much this costs, he replied "that depends on our financial capacity, because hiring medical specialists is expensive anywhere in the world".
If the Mozambican state had the money, then it should hire at least 300 foreign specialist doctors. "But that's clearly incompatible with the Mozambican state budget", he said. "So, according to the financial situation in each year, we recruit the doctors it is possible to recruit".
Even with the money available, it was not always possible to recruit the specialists that Mozambique wanted. "Even in Europe", Garrido said, "if we want a neuro-surgeon, it's very difficult to find one, because there are only a few neuro-surgeons anywhere in the world".
SOURCE: AIM
