MISAU in Inhambane is going from bad to worse: ambulance fueled with money paid for by the governor's advisor

Paulo Vilanculo"

What occurred at the Massinga District Hospital on Friday, January 9, 2026, is not merely an isolated episode of mismanagement: it is a stark portrait of the functional collapse of a public health system that, in practice, has outsourced its constitutional responsibility to the pockets of citizens and the goodwill of individuals in power. A critically ill patient, a victim of severe burns, urgently needed transfer to the Inhambane Provincial Hospital. There was an ambulance, there was a clinical need, but the essential element was lacking: fuel. This case raises unavoidable questions: where is the funding for the basic operation of health units? How is it possible that a district hospital does not have fuel for an ambulance in service? How many patients, without an advisor nearby and without 5,000 meticais available, are left behind? How long will the Ministry of Health continue to survive on patchwork solutions, internal handouts, and individual sacrifices to hide a sick system?

A citizen was admitted to the Massinga District Hospital after suffering severe burns in the district itself, in a clinical situation that required immediate assistance and urgent transfer to a referral hospital. The victim went to the local hospital trusting in the State's constitutional duty to guarantee adequate and timely healthcare. Faced with the urgency, the local hospital administration admitted to lacking the means to refuel the ambulance and, in a gesture that blatantly violates the principle of free and universal access to the National Health Service, demanded that the patient's family pay for the fuel so that the transfer could be possible. It was not the system nor the public budget that saved the patient; it was a personal gesture. The chronology of this episode reveals not only logistical negligence but a dangerous trivialization of clinical emergencies.

However, what should have been an emergency procedure quickly turned into a path of uncertainty, negligence, and exposure of the structural fragility of the public health system, when the hospital administration claimed an inability to proceed with the transfer due to a lack of fuel for the ambulance, conditioning the patient's evacuation on means that have nothing to do with the right to life and medical assistance. With the insistence of the family, who reminded the hospital that healthcare is the State's duty and not a conditional favor, the impasse was only broken when an advisor to the provincial governor, confronted with the gravity of the situation and the imminent risk of death for the patient, as well as the irreparable damage to the sector's image by contributing 5,000 meticais from his own pocket to fuel the ambulance, further exposed the institutional fragility of the Ministry of Health in Inhambane. Even so, the institutional humiliation did not end there. The transfer, which should have been immediate, only took place at 7 pm on Saturday, almost 24 hours after the first alert. In cases of severe burns, every hour counts, every delay worsens the prognosis, and every indecision can cost a life.

This would be the true stage for parliamentary oversight of the “23 hours of anguish in Massinga,” not the Zimpeto parade of pampering, photographs, and comfortable speeches. It is precisely in this type of concrete, painful, and structural situation that the voice of parliamentary oversight should resonate strongly, and not in protocol visits, symbolic gestures, or media-driven coffee breaks in health units previously prepared for public exposure. A member of parliament does not exercise their mandate for cosmetic gestures, but to question the Executive, demand public explanations, summon the Ministry of Health to Parliament, and, above all, transform cases like this into matters of political responsibility. If the member of parliament has a voice, a mandate, and resources, their “political pocket” should serve to initiate processes of institutional accountability, not to finance proximity marketing.

This is where the intervention of a deputy like Ivandro Maasingue, nicknamed "circulo e essência" (circle and essence), would make historical and political sense, questioning the budgetary allocation to the health sector in Inhambane, demanding reports on the management of logistical resources in district hospitals, requesting audits of the fuel supply chain, and publicly denouncing the illegal practice of demanding payments from patients. It would be fair to say that in Massinga, the parliamentary silence screamed louder than any speech made over coffee and coffee. Oversight that is limited to the symbolic is a silent accomplice to the collapse it claims to combat. A "protest and coffee break" at model healthcare facilities may yield impressive images, but it doesn't save burn victims, doesn't fuel ambulances, and doesn't hold negligent managers accountable. Thus, policy loses legitimacy when it becomes mere charade.

The people don't need politicians who are mere tourists of the system; they need troublesome politicians who go where the State has failed and shake the structures that normalize the unacceptable. In Massinga, the episode of the ambulance fueled with private money is not just an administrative scandal; it's a red alert about the real state of healthcare in Inhambane: from bad to worse, with human lives paying the price of institutional abandonment. The Massinga case highlights the gap between formal and substantive oversight. The right to care has become a negotiable commodity at the bedside, in a scenario where life is worth as much as the immediate ability to pay. Public health cannot depend on the occasional heroism of advisors, nor on the financial capacity of desperate families. When a ministry saves its "image" at the expense of a citizen's pocket and not the efficiency of the State, something is profoundly wrong. When a state ambulance is unable to leave due to lack of fuel and a life is only saved thanks to the pocket of a governor's advisor, we are no longer in the realm of administrative anecdote, but of the functional failure of the state.

2025/12/3