At the Amora center of the Via Verde Saúde Seixal branch in the Setubal district, there will be no medical activities during December due to a shortage of doctors, the institution said.
“Due to the acute shortage of doctors, in December we were forced to reformulate the activities of Via Verde Saúde Seixal,” explains Via Verde Saúde Seixal coordinator Alexandra Fernandez in a statement published on the unit’s website.
The restrictions affect two hubs: Amora and Corroyos.
The Amora Center will not carry out medical activities, only nursing activities will continue, and the Corroyos Center will only carry out nursing activities, maternal and child health monitoring and medical response to emergency situations within existing capabilities.
“We hope to be able to resume normal activities in January,” says the coordinator.
Via Verde Saúde Seixal, an innovative project that received an honorable mention in the Good Practices in Health Award, was created in 2022, serves 45 thousand users without a family doctor and was recently recognized as a model by the Minister of Health Manuel Pizarro. be reproduced.
For the Health Users’ Commission of the municipality of Seixal, this situation is very worrying and is a consequence of the lack of attractiveness of the National Health Service for young doctors.
In a conversation with Lusa, commission representative José Lourenço explained that the department is at one-eighth of its capacity, making medical care in both centers impossible.
“We are extremely concerned,” he said, adding that the contract of doctors working in the department under a special permit expired at the end of November, and no new contracts were signed requiring higher authorization, namely from the regional health department.
José Lourenço said that this problem cannot be solved with the help of workers, but that it is better to hire doctors with good wage conditions.
“There is no shortage of doctors in the country. What there aren’t are doctors on the NHS because it’s unattractive. It’s good that people stop treating doctors badly. It would be good if they understood that the doctors’ struggle is to replace them. purchasing power of doctors. The last 12 years have been without an increase in wages and the conditions that they had before the time of the Troika,” he emphasized.
The situation in Via Verde Saude Seixal was also condemned by the Political Committee of the PSD Seixal section, which in a statement considers that this statement is “extremely serious, given the time of year and the expectations that were created by the Socialist government in anticipation of this decision, which promised to solve the problems of users without family doctor.”
According to SDP Seixal, this case reveals the state of complete bankruptcy of the SNA and “exposes the most retrograde and statist theses of the left and radical left, which, due to ideological prejudices, insist on the refusal of urgent and necessary consultations between the social sector and the private sector, which can and permanently solve the very serious problems of shortages of material and human resources in the healthcare sector.”
In its statement, SDP Seixal says it advocates massive investment in primary health care through properly equipped health centres, the resumption of long-term care and emergency services, and criticizes the communist municipal executive for “taking steps instead to recruit doctors.” invest “in propaganda around the ghost hospital,” alluding to Hospital do Seixal.
The construction of the Hospital Do Seixal in the district of Setubal has been a demand for more than two decades, which was already the subject of a protocol between the state and the municipal council of Seixal in 2009.
On March 29, during a visit to the García de Orta Hospital in Almada, the Minister of Health said that the tender for the construction of the Seixal Hospital should be issued in the last quarter of this year or early 2024, classifying it as essential equipment.
Author: Lusa
Source: CM Jornal
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