Postponed surgeries and outpatient consultations in Algarve hospitals and restrictions in primary care units are the consequences of a strike called by the Independent Union of Physicians (SIM) that began on Tuesday, a union source told Lusa.
Speaking to Lusa, Algarve SIM regional secretary João Dias said the strike commitment is “quite high”, around 93.5%, and this is primarily reflected in the postponement of external consultations and non-urgent operations that force users to return home.
“The government is pushing us into a situation that we tried to avoid as much as possible. There is a growing lack of response capacity in ORs and consultations because there are fewer people and I don’t know how it will end. But the Government is not coping with the solution of the problem in this way,” he stressed.
According to Joao Dias, the operating rooms of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve (CHUA), which unites hospitals in Faro, Portimão and Lagos, are operating with minimal services, and all surgeries that are not considered urgent are being postponed.
“Many of these patients sometimes wait three or four months for an appointment, or five or six months for an operation, and now they go home waiting to have it.
According to the leader of the union, doctors are trained in public hospitals in order to “go to the private sector” as professionals “fell discouraged” year after year and end up thinking it’s best to go to the private sector.
“The Algarve must be able to respond to the population it serves, it cannot be in a situation where it has no dermatologists, no haematologists, no endocrinologists and at least has an orthopedic service,” he stressed.
In addition to these specialties, gynecology and obstetrics are “down to a third of the staff,” and pediatrics, with two maternity hospitals, work “virtually five days a week, if not six, there is no pediatrician in Portimão, and the rest of the time there is no pediatrician in Faro,” he insisted.
“We have patients waiting for surgery in the Algarve, they cannot get a response, and what is the agreement reached? An agreement has been reached with hospitals such as Riba d’Ave. [em Braga]what is the farthest place in the country, there was no place further, only if it were in Spain, ”he criticized.
According to João Dias, doctors are on strike “not only to have better conditions and attraction for professionals to stay in the National Health Service, but above all because they want the country to be able to respond.”
Doctors today launched a three-day nationwide strike to force the government to submit a concrete proposal to revise the pay scale, which the health minister promised on Monday to send to unions.
According to SIM, the shutdown comes at the same time as the strike of family doctors for overtime, which began on Monday and will last a month.
Author: Portuguese
Source: CM Jornal
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