The Jean Piaget School of Health of the Algarve, installed on the Piaves Institute's Silves campus, was transformed in record time into a welcoming area for people at risk in the current fight against the Covid-19 pandemic. With the academic activities suspended, that academic space was initially equipped with 50 beds, with the possibility of reinforcing more beds if necessary.
The first occupants resettled in the ZAP lived in an apartment in Armação de Pera, and this decision was taken by the Health Authorities, after the suspicion of an affair with Covid-19.
The transfer of the Piaget Institute's facilities in Silves follows the decision of the Algarve municipality to create three areas to support the population (ZAP), anticipating scenarios that it is better to be prepared for the worst, in order to allow a quick response. In addition to the facilities of the Escola Superior de Saúde Jean Piaget, it was decided to create two more ZAPs, one in Pera and another in Armação de Pera, for a total of 180 beds.
The spaces allow to receive specific groups of the population that need to be in isolation (namely to support nursing homes) and to welcome and support, if necessary, elements of the Civil Protection and National Health Service (SNS) forces.
The proximity of the academic campus to the Silves Health Center was a factor taken into account in its transformation into a variant of a field hospital, especially since the Health Center now has a community support center in the area where it operates. emergency services worked, integrated into the ARS Algarve network. Unlike traditional field hospitals, there was a concern to ensure some additional comfort for those who have to stay there, with the local authority and other local entities mobilizing themselves to ensure clean beds, clothes and some extra furniture, such as sofas.
In recent days, students and graduates of the various degrees (Nursing, Physiotherapy and Osteopathy) that are taught at the School have volunteered to collaborate in operations to assist the population, if necessary.
“The last few weeks have been marked by the uncertainty caused by the pandemic that is plaguing the world, so the Piaget Institute will do everything to always be at the side of the communities where it is inserted, in convergence with one of the Institution's strategic intervention axes. We immediately made the Silves campus available to the local authority and health authorities, convinced that with effort, resilience and transformative capacity we will overcome this crisis together ”, says Nelson Sousa, director of the Jean Piaget do Algarve Higher School of Health.
Last week, the Piaget Institute's Vila Nova de Gaia campus, where a higher education and health school operates, had also donated various materials for hospital assistance, including masks and gowns, to Vila Nova Hospital of Gaia.
About the Piaget Institute
The Piaget Institute has consolidated, throughout its 40 years of existence, higher education, research and areas of intervention in the communities where it has its campuses (4), through its Schools and Institutes (in a total of 7 education institutions) Higher Education in Portugal). The Piaget Institute project has been present since 1999 in Portuguese-speaking countries, such as: Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and Mozambique. Attentive to the problems of the surrounding communities in its areas of activity, it has been establishing intervention measures with civil society institutions, creating other entities - on its own initiative - to streamline its actions and establish bridges between the Piaget Institute and the community, through associated projects. This is the case of ONGD Agência Piaget for Development, NucliSol Jean Piaget, Edições Piaget, among other projects.
