Maputo, 20 Sep (AIM) – The Permanent Secretary of the Health Ministry (MISAU), Ivan Manhiça, has challenged the Mozambican Association of Pediatricians (AMOPE) to strengthen measures aimed at preventing the main diseases affecting children and adolescents.
According to Manhiça, who was speaking, on Thursday, in Maputo, at the opening ceremony of the 6th Congress of AMOPE, which is being held under the slogan “Promoting the Integral Health of Children and Adolescents: Challenges and Perspectives”, Mozambique’s current epidemiological situation needs efforts of various sectors and AMOPE plays a very relevant role.
“Mozambique’s current epidemiological situation is marked by the continued high burden of communicable diseases, including chronic non-communicable diseases”, he said.
According to the Permanent Secretary, the outlook for the coming decades points to a complex health situation, demanding from AMOPE an increasingly active role in generating multidisciplinary scientific evidence to inform and formulate health sector policies and solutions.
He explained that, to overcome the current challenges, the health sector must increase specialized human resources, training health professionals in pediatric areas, including postgraduate levels.
“Comprehensive child health training, the development of disease prevention actions and assistance for children and adolescents are among the health sector’s priorities. However, we acknowledge that there are inequities in access to health services, especially those provided by specialist doctors, in this case pediatricians”, he said.
The latest issue of the demographic and health survey indicates that the country still faces challenges in terms of pediatric care, including complications during pregnancy, the general problem of childbirth and neonatal care.
For her part, the President of AMOPE, Carla Wale, explained that the aim of the Congress is to share scientific knowledge in order to find solutions and improve the health of children and adolescents in Mozambique.
“In terms of human resources, we have few pediatricians. We would like to have more pediatricians throughout our country, as we have seen most of them are concentrated in the Central Hospital. We have very few in the provinces. Our challenge is to train our human resources so that they can provide greater service to our population”, she said.
(AIM)
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