The parliamentary group of the Communist Party has submitted a request urgently to hear from the Parliamentary Health Committee, the bosses of the Algarve’s regional health administration (ARS), and from the Algarve hospitals group (CHA), and also from the doctors working in the Algarve’s hospitals.
At issue is the now-famous petition signed by 182 medics from the 230 that work at Faro and Portimão hospitals.
According to the Communist Party, the situations and shortages outlined in the letter released last week, “are extremely serious and can not be ignored."
"At issue is the operation of the hospitals in the Algarve region and of the quality of care provided to the population," according to the authors of the request, MPs Paula Santos, Carla Cruz and Paulo Sá.
Doctors have complained about the degradation of health care provided to the Algarve public, the frequent postponements of scheduled surgeries due to lack of materials, delays in conducting examinations, and a lack of medicines.
This has all been flatly denied by health chief Pedro Nunes who says that the doctors simply are choosing to ignore his efforts to rationalise and improve services. Dialogue and liason clearly are not the strong points of Dr Nunes who seems to have irritated just about everyone involved in this dispute whose suport he needs toi ensure his plans are smoothly executed.
The group of doctors also accuse Pedro Nunes, who leads the Algarve hospitals group (CHA), of a lack of dialogue with health professionals, which "greatly harms patients," since the doctors feel their medical opinions are not being heeded and that patient care is being run by accountants, not doctors.
The Comunist Party has lost little time in turning this regional spat into a political issue by insisting the disagreement is symptomatic of the wider plan by the ruling coalition of a “premeditated destruction of the law and of the health of the population of the Algarve.”
The party claims that the lack of doctors, nurses and other technicians, the lengthening of waiting periods for consultations, surgeries and other medical procedures, a lack of materials, the closure of beds, the disruption to emergency services, and the degradation of patient care, among other aspects are bringing the Algarve's health service to a new low.
When this is discussed in Parliament and reports heard from the highly-trained medical profession of the true state of the Algarve's hospital service, Dr Nunes's stated wish for retirement may be a good option.
