A recently appointed agency doctor, who started work at the Monchique Health Centre last Thursday, collapsed and died at work on Friday morning.
The regional health authority, faced with two doctors officially retiring this year, says that the municipality will be covered, after some rescheduling and redeployment within the region. A replacement doctor is to be found.
The agency doctor was filling in for the retiring doctors who soon are to be taken back under a health ministry scheme to encourage doctors to work into their retirement, if they so wish.
The regional health service seeks to recruit five more doctors for the western Algarve and has advertised internally within the national health service with the cut-off date of July 19th now passed.
There is a further recruitment drive to attract recently qualified doctors - this closes at the end of July.
The University of Algarve’s course in medicine also has helped keep doctors in the Algarve with 8 of the 28 students finishing their course last year, now working in local hospitals.
According to the University, "more and more doctors that train at the University of Algarve, then choose the region in which to develop their professional careers."
For these doctors, "district hospitals provide better learning opportunities, and in the Algarve they can continue to maintain strong links with the University and can carry on to do a master’s degree in medicine.”
The deepening of the relationship between the University and the region's hospitals is one of the major objectives of the new management set-up, the Hospital and University Center of the Algarve, recently approved by the Council of Ministers.
As for private health care, the Lusíadas Clinic of Faro opened on July 25, next to the municipal market, and aims to make "healthcare more accessible to the population of the region."
This is the fourth unit of the Lusíadas Saúde group for the Algarve and, explains José Carlos Magalhães, president Of the Board of Directors of Lusíadas Saúde, “The opening of the new clinic is a reflection of the commitment of the Lusíadas Saúde group in the Algarve region. We want to be closer to people, giving them the best response to their health care, helping them to live a healthier life, and involving them in an environment of attention and convenience."
"People are our priority and, therefore, the Lusíadas Faro Clinic will allow us to carry out exams and treatments using the latest technology. This clinic also has the particularity of being more accessible to the population, due to its strategic location in the centre of Faro, and offers parking facilities," says Nuno Lourenço, general director of the four Lusíadas units in the Algarve.
