Former Undersecretary of State for Health Jamila Madeira assured this Wednesday that she was never aware of the case of Portuguese-Brazilian twins treated at the Santa Maria Hospital for spinal muscular atrophy in 2020.
In a conversation with Lusa, the former governor, who worked at the Ministry of Health from October 2019 to September 2020 at the same time as former Minister Marta Temido and former Secretary of State Lacerda Sales, admitted that messages sent from the Civil Chamber of the President of the Republic to the Office of the Prime Minister were then sent to the relevant ministries, but did not reach the secretaries of state.
“There’s nothing wrong with me. Clinical cases didn’t go through my office. They didn’t go through the ministry initially, much less through my office. Just funding issues or something like that,” Jamilah Madeira said, continuing: “I never there were no requests that came from the Prime Minister’s Office. If there were others, I cannot comment, I don’t know.”
In a conversation with Lusa, he reiterated that he was not aware of any reports of specific clinical cases coming to the Ministry of Health calling for a solution.
“Not at all. Neither the most difficult nor the easiest. I don’t have any knowledge. I don’t accept that this was normal… Hospitals have autonomy in making clinical decisions, and they are made in that context, everything else is what is speculated in the press,” he said.
He also emphasized that since he was an economist and not a clinician, the approaches he received from hospitals were general and primarily concerned with budgetary issues.
Asked about the alleged indication that the admission of the twins at Santa Maria Hospital was requested by the Secretary of State, with Lacerda Sales already defending on Tuesday that “no Secretary of State has the authority to make appointments”, the former ruler simply suggested that what it was impractical for him.
“I am surprised? No and no. I don’t know if it was practical or not, it wasn’t for me. But I can’t talk about others,” she said.
Jamila Madeira went further and suggested that the only case she knew about in this context was the case of baby Matilda, which occurred in the summer of 2019 and only through the media.
“I was never aware of anything connected with this case, and the only thing I heard from the press was about Matilda, before she became Secretary of State. In fact, this is the first and even generates the first special permission in the previous director, who always moves through the hospital and there is a protocol that then goes to Infarmed… Nothing goes through the Ministry of Health,” he concluded.
The twins’ case was revealed in a TVI report aired in early November, according to which two Portuguese-Brazilian children traveled to Portugal in 2019 to receive the drug Zolgensma – one of the most expensive in the world – to treat spinal conditions. muscle atrophy, the total cost of which was four million euros.
According to TVI, there were suspicions that this happened under the influence of the President of the Republic, who denied any interference in the matter.
The case is being investigated by the Attorney General’s Office, the General Inspectorate of Health, and is also the subject of an internal audit at the Hospital University of Northern Lisbon, of which the Santa Maria Hospital is part.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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