Health minister says rotating maternity hospitals ‘great alternative’ to closure

The Minister of Health assured this Friday that the rotation of maternity hospitals in Lisbon, the Tagus Valley and the Algarve is a “great alternative” to their final closure, rejecting criticism from the opposition that the model is unpredictable.

“We have a rotational operating model in Lisbon, the Tagus Valley and the Algarve, which is forced on us by a lack of professionals and is a great alternative to the permanent closure of these maternity hospitals, which would be a serious mistake and a serious loss for the population and for the formation of new resources,” said Manuel Pizarro in Parliament.

In a question to the government promoted by the Liberal Initiative (IL) panel about the current state of the National Health Service (NHS), the official acknowledged that the political debate over the solution found for maternity hospitals could be “very exciting in January or February”, shortly after after the current model came into operation.

“It has been six months for the model to work, and the truth is that we have demonstrated that we have managed to launch all public maternity hospitals in the north, in the center, and now in Alentejo, where this was not possible last year. provide,” said Manuel Pizarro.

According to the minister, the model, adopted since the beginning of the year, allows pregnant women to be confident that the country’s maternity units are functioning “of high quality, safe and predictable.”

“Despite this functioning, in the SNS there has never been a need in any maternity hospital to perform 70, 80, 90 or 100% of births by caesarean section, as in those maternity hospitals, which, according to I.L., will be the salvation of the mother’s health and child in our country. country,” he said.

Earlier, Illinois MP Joana Cordeiro defended that the government’s “Birth Safely” plan “doesn’t offer the slightest bit of predictability to pregnant women who don’t know where their babies will be born.”

BE MP Joana Mortagua also accused the government of believing that “a pregnant woman cannot know if a maternity hospital will be open on the day she goes into labor” and if she will be “properly monitored throughout her pregnancy.”

“Years of educating medical teams, pregnant women, families about the need to humanize childbirth, encourage women and services to plan for childbirth, fight obstetric violence, and now they are useless,” he criticized.