The Ministry of Health spent $4.2 million on overseas patient transfers in the first 10 months of 2014.
Ministry of Health Hospital Support Services and Transfers national director Dr Horacio da Costa Sarmento said a lack of facilities in Timor-Leste meant patients were forced to go overseas for treatment.
Cancers and cardiac and renal diseases cannot be treated in Timor-Leste.
“We want to reduce the number of overseas patient transfers but we can’t as we have no diagnostic equipment for cancer, so patients need to go overseas,” Dr Sarmento said.
Timor-Leste has eight dialysis machines but this was not enough to service all the nation’s kidney patients.
He said the spend on patient transfers had exceeded its initial budget of $2.6 million.
Close to 200 patients were transferred to hospitals in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.
Most of the patients received blood transfusions, chemotherapy or radiotherapy.
Fourteen of the 199 patients transferred died.
Commission F (health, education, culture, veterans’ affairs and gender equality) member Eladio Faculto said he did not anticipate a drop in the number of patients transferred as the health sector was plagued by poor management.
He said the Ministry of Health needed to upgrade referral hospitals so they could provide support to the national hospital.
Department of Non-infectious Diseases chief Dr Herculano Seixas dos Santos said the health ministry was conducting an awareness campaign to prevent non-infectious diseases.
“We are doing the campaign so people across the whole country have the knowledge to be able to prevent themselves from ending up with cancers, heart problems or diabetes,” he said.
