From August 1st, the emergency department at Faro hospital will have no surgeons available over the weekends.
"Without a surgeon, people die," said Martine dos Santos, director of the Surgery Service, noting that the situation is "very serious."
Surgeons at the emergency unit have told management of their "unavailability to perform more overtime at the Emergency Department,” from the 1st of next month.
This means that there will be no surgeon available to support the Emergency Service Unit between Friday and Sunday, at least during August, a month in which the Algarve’s population swells dramatically due to the influx of tourists.
A document explaining the situation and signed by 19 of the 23 surgeons on the Faro hospital roster, was delivered on June 23rd by Martins dos Santos, director of the Surgery Service.
"People are exhausted, they have done much more than what is required of them," said dos Santos who formally has alerted the administration of the Hospital do Algarve as to the looming problem.
"It is not possible for an Emergency Department to function without the support of surgeons,” says Dr dos Santos. The hospital’s management stated only that it is "working to ensure a proper response” to the exhausted surgeons.
In addition to the problems with surgeons, Faro and Portimão hospitals have closed their Orthopedic emergency services facility on Saturdays with the promise that one doctor will be available on a Sunday.
Local MP Cristóvão Norte considers the situation to be "of the utmost gravity", because "it determines that urgent cases have to be diverted to Lisbon or, alternatively, to private hospitals in the Algarve region."
Norte says this simply is uncoordinated and shows “an inability to ensure adequate care provision for citizens."
The Regional Health Administration for the Algarve (the aptly named ARS) realises that there is a shortage of Doctors in the summer months when the population rises from under 500,000 to over a million.
ARS's great plan is to ask doctors to work in Faro and Portimão hospitals and in the region’s health centers during the summer months for just a couple of days at a time and if the doctor has a holiday home in the Algarve, he or she can use that as a base while the rest of the family has a holiday.
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