Health Minister Sergio da Costa Lobo has pledged to fix the system to transfer patients from the districts to Dili’s National Hospital of Guido Valadares to allow patients’ families to accompany them. 
Minister Lobo recognized that while the government has made allowances for patients requiring transfers to overseas facilities to be accompanied by their families, the same option was not available for patients who are transferred domestically.
“We provide tickets, per diem and everything else for those who go overseas, but most of the transfers are to Dili. (For these)we do not arrange it; the ambulance takes them and then they do not know where their family is staying or eating,” Minister Lobo said at the National Parliament.
He said the State General Budget 2014 had specific provisions for overseas patients transfers including conditions to create partnerships with hospitals in countries such as Singapore and Malaysia in order to establish a cardiology unit in Timor-Leste and to improve the nation’s referral system.
“I think the ministry should look into and obey what has been written in the Constitution of the Republic which says all people have the right to have free health services,” Lobo said.
Member of Commission F (health, education, culture, veterans’ affairs and gender equality issues) Member of Parliament Eladio Faculto echoed this and said it was the obligation of the government to provide health treatment for all.
The MP recognized that the Ministry of Health was paying more attention to the patients and their families who were transferred overseas than those who were transferred from the districts to Dili.
