On the afternoon of Tuesday, October 29, USP and Angola’s Institute of Health Specialization (IES) signed a technical, academic, and scientific cooperation agreement to strengthen the empowerment of health professionals in the African country.
With an initial term of five years, the agreement provides for the implementation of joint teaching, research, and extension projects in the health area, with the exchange of students, professors, and researchers. The Angolan government will grant fellowships to professionals previously selected by the IES to attend graduate studies, residency, and specialization programs at the University of São Paulo units interested in receiving students from Angola.
“We have the great collaboration of a world-class institution such as the University of São Paulo to help qualify our professionals and, above all, to share experiences, not only in the area of health care but also in disease prevention, administrative management, and communication.” We have learned a lot from Brazil and, on this journey, we can count on USP’s experience so that we can achieve our goals,” said Angola’s Minister of Health, Sílvia Paula Valentim Lutucuta.
In February this year, USP and the Ministry of Higher Education, Science, Technology and Innovation from Angola signed a contract for the Science and Technology Development Project, which will offer more than 100 fellowships for graduate studies for Angolan professors and researchers.
According to the Deputy Provost of Graduate Studies, Adenilso da Silva Simão, “Angola is currently the third nationality of foreign students at USP and this is a great joy for us. For a long time, internationalization was seen only as sending our students to foreign universities, but the other way was absent, that is, the support we can offer here.”
Brazil-Angola partnership
The agreement between USP and IES is part of the Brazilian government’s Brazil-Angola Human Resources Qualify in Health Program. Created in April, the initiative is a technical-educational cooperation between the two countries aimed at strengthening the Angolan public health system by expanding the clinical and administrative skills of its professionals.
The program is coordinated by the Brazilian Cooperation Agency (ABC) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in partnership with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Education, and the Brazilian Hospital Services Company (EBSERH).
“With this program, by 2027, we have the goal of qualifying 38,000 professionals from the 17 Angolan provinces, and we are sure that it will also contribute to qualifying all the Brazilian workers who are involved in the training process. To this extent, our strategic purposes are to improve the quality of human resources management and to ensure the equal distribution of qualified health professionals in Angola”, explained Livia Milena Barbosa de Deus e Mello, director of the Health Education Management Department of the Secretariat for Labor Management and Health Education of the Brazilian Ministry of Health, representing Minister Nísia Trindade Lima.
The ceremony was also attended by the dean of Angola’s Institute of Health Specialization, Mateus Guilherme Miguel; the Chief of Staff from the Brazilian Cooperation Agency, Andréia Rigueira; the deputy director of the USP Agency of National and International Cooperation (Aucani), Paulo Henrique Braz da Silva; and representatives of the Brazilian and Angolan governments.
