“We will do the possible and the impossible so that, in this legislature, the construction of the new Hospital Central do Algarve advances”, said Paulo Morgado, the president of the Regional Health Administration of the Algarve (ARS), yesterday.
The ARS president, in charge of managing of the National Health Service in the Algarve region promised "news for the Algarve in 2020, good news" regarding the new hospital, on the same day that Health Minister Marta Temido assured that this essential infrastructure proposal will begin to be built in 2021.
Mr. Morgado revealed that the entity he runs has been working "for a long time" on the project of the Central Hospital of the Algarve. “There is a lot of technical work to do before things go public. At this moment, this technical work is already being done and will continue to be done throughout 2020, so that it is possible, this year, to present a calendar with a reasonable level of certainty regarding the development of the process”, he explained.
“This project and the studies that have been done are about ten years old and have to be updated. Reality and needs have changed, so the consturiction will have to be done different. It is this technical work to figure out the development process which has yet to be realized” added the ARS president.
Yesterday, the Minister of Health had assured journalists, on the sidelines of a tribute ceremony to the late Dr. Manuel Santos Serra at the Albufeira Health Center, that the process of building new hospital is steaming forward, and will begin in 2021.
“Here in the Algarve, where a new infrastructure has been announced for so many years, in 2020 we have to plan, so that in 2021 we can start implementing it”, said Marta Temido. However, the minister stressed that, for now, studies and the identification of the different technical aspects related to the project are what is being focused on.
“As everyone knows, building a new hospital takes a lot of time - almost as much as training a health professional, sometimes more. We want to have answers in the shortest possible time. But things are not easy and we are working”, said Marta Temido.
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Yesterday's international headline "China builds hospital in 4 days" flies in the face of the government's claiming to do the impossible by building one in a 'mere' 3 years.