MAPUTO– Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi on Wednesday inaugurated the new headquarters of the National Health Institute (INS), the body in charge of health research activities.
The president said the new premises, located in Marracuene district, about 30 kilometres north of downtown Maputo, should allow the INS to play its role to provide solutions based on scientific evidence for the country’s health problems.
For more than four decades, he added, the INS has been growing, and has been making a great contribution to strengthening our national health system. It had been responding to the demands for scientific evidence to support the health service in controlling epidemics, and had become one of the most consolidated and comprehensive institutions of its kind in Africa.
The new headquarters cost more than ten million US dollars provided by the US government through its embassy in Maputo.
Nyusi pledged that Mozambique would make good use of this investment. This institute belongs to Mozambicans and it is to serve all Mozambicans, without any discrimination, he said.
US Ambassador Dean Pittman said his government supported the INS because it recognized that a strong national health service depended on strong laboratory and information systems which could undertake surveillance and monitoring of diseases, and provide the research evidence to support health programmes.
The state-of-the-art laboratories can handle research into such common diseases as malaria, but also have containment facilities for dealing with samples containing highly dangerous pathogens such as the Ebola virus.
Source: NAM NEWS NETWORK