Cabo Verde’s government is considering a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) to build the Cabo Verde National Hospital in Praia, a project estimated to cost €65 million, the deputy prime minister, Olavo Correia, said on Thursday.
“We are talking about a new area. We have never done a large PPP in the health sector, so we have to look at best practices and absorb them for our context,” said Olavo Correia, who is also finance minister, after a workshop on the financing model for Cabo Verde’s National Hospital (HNCV).
“In this regard, we have the important partnership of the IFC [International Finance Corporation] and the World Bank,” he said.
With construction work awaiting funding to begin, the deputy prime minister noted that it was necessary for the government to “clearly define” the project, “which will move forward,” acknowledging that the PPP scheme “would allow for the funding and operationalisation” of that reference hospital unit.
“There is strong political engagement and engagement at all levels for this to happen. But we have to prepare the decision well so that the project is well-founded and that the hospital guarantees us a smooth operation,” he said.
“It is a project that fits in with the main priorities identified to prepare the country for epidemiological and demographic trends, and which include expanding the country’s tertiary care capacity through a PPP,” he acknowledged.
He also said that this hospital should be built “not only from the perspective of infrastructure but also from the perspective of setting up a health service solution for our fellow citizens” in a model replicated in other countries.
“This hospital aims to complement the available supply of tertiary care in the country, expanding the current capacity and level of complexity of services, to improve the quality of health care and reduce external evacuations, taking into account the financial costs and, above all, the human costs that derive from these needs,” he concluded.
Cabo Verde’s prime minister, Ulisses Correia e Silva, announced last May the launch, later this year, of construction of the HNCV in the city of Praia, one of the country’s largest public works.
“Of course, the Hospital Agostinho Neto [in Praia, currently the largest in the country] will continue, with its functions, its valences, but we will add another hospital, built, thought and designed from scratch, at the most advanced technological level that we can bring here to Cabo Verde and the level of higher skills that we can assume regarding our health professionals,” he added.
The government publicly presented in March 2021 the HNCV project, which should be ready in three years, to improve healthcare and reduce external medical evacuations.
“It will surely be born with features that we need to develop to reduce the levels of evacuations to other countries and have much more capacity here in terms of service provision,” the prime minister pointed out.
The process for the construction of the HNCV began almost three years ago, with the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the government of Cabo Verde and Santa Casa da Misericórdia do Porto (Portugal).
After that, an inter-ministerial technical team was set up to prepare the formal, conceptual and technical acts for mobilising funding, finalising the project and defining the management model and access to services.
The future national hospital is expected to be built in the Achada Limpo area of Praia, with a maximum capacity of 134 beds, 12 of which will be for intensive care.
The future health infrastructure will not replace the country’s two central public hospitals – Agostinho Neto, in Praia, and Batista de Sousa, in São Vicente – but rather complement the available supply and maximise resources.
The HNCV is budgeted at 7.2 billion escudos (65 million), according to figures presented by the finance ministry, 47% of which will be for construction, while 53% will be for equipment and training of technicians.
The main aims of the hospital will be to improve healthcare, with high levels of specialisation and sustainability, and to reduce medical evacuations abroad, which currently amount to around 500 patients per year, mainly to Portugal, costing the state 300 million escudos (€2.7 million).
