Domingos Ngozulu shudders as he recalls the fate of his baby son. The child was born with breathing difficulties last December in a public paediatric centre in the Angolan capital of Luanda. Grimly aware of the shortages afflicting the country’s health system, Ngozulu, a handyman in a residential building, brought latex gloves, dressings and disinfectant to help the baby’s care.
A day later, the newborn was turfed out of the clinic.“The doctor told us that the baby was fine, that he had just drunk some amniotic fluid. There was only one nurse for 20 or 30 patients,” said Ngozulu, 32.
His son finally died at the Maria Pia hospital, one of the largest public health establishments in the capital, after some days in intensive care. In the decrepit unit, two or three infants sometimes had to share a single incubator.
But the grieving family’s nightmare was still not over. To Ngozulu’s enduring horror, the hospital handed him the body of a different baby.
The tale is emblematic of Angola’s tottering public health system, grappling a surge in needs and a slump in income.
“People don’t even want to go to the public hospital when they are unwell because they are so scared of dying there and they know that in any case they won’t get any medicine,” said Adao Goncalve, a 38-year-old driver.
In spite of becoming Africa’s second largest oil producer after Nigeria, Angola today has the world’s highest mortality rate for children under five, with 157 deaths for every 1,000 births, according to the World Bank (2015). “The Angolan health service is free and paid for entirely by the state. There are almost no taxes. But the state budget depends entirely on oil,” said Hernando Agudelo Ospina, representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) in Angola.
A global decline in the price of oil has deprived Angola of vital resources to such an extent that in April, the regime of President Jose Eduardo dos Santos asked for financial assistance from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
