Yesterday, the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, guaranteed that the Government will provide the necessary means for the Algarve Local Health Unit (ULS) to implement the plan it outlined, to guarantee the assistance response in the summer.
Ana Paula Martins spoke to journalists after meeting with the leaders of ULS do Algarve, in Faro, and explained that, over the approximately four hours of the meeting, she collected information about the “additional means” that the Government can “activate”, through the Ministry of Health, to support the plan prepared by regional entities for the summer.
“What is foreseen in the Local Health Unit’s plan is to be able to respond with the means that it has already managed to activate and with a few more that we, naturally, will try to activate during the next few weeks”, said the government official, guaranteeing that she has “absolute confidence” in the work being done in the region to ensure this response.
Asked about the means that the Ministry of Health may have to use to guarantee support for ULS, Ana Paula Martins assured that they will be “those that are necessary”, stressing that, “in the Algarve people are already very used to living with those who are in the Algarve and responding to those who are in the Algarve”.
“This decision is foreseen in the plan and is a decision taken, therefore, as you know, in conjunction with the executive management of the National Health Service and with the Local Health Unit, which has a clinical director for the primary care area and a clinical director for the area of hospital care”, she stated.
Ana Paula Martins indicated that there are rotation scales and models “that are different throughout the country” - and that those that “work well” will be maintained, but highlighted that “there are others that have already proven themselves, in some areas, that need to be improved”, with the Government paying “particular attention” to the regions of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo and Algarve.
“It doesn’t mean that the rest of the country isn’t very important, the entire country is very important, but these are two areas where the Government essentially focuses its attention, namely in the area of emergency, which you mentioned very well here, pediatric or obstetric, therefore maternal or child, and naturally in what is the response to situations such as trauma, the situation of acute illness”, she said.
The Minister of Health also stated that she had “reinforced” her “absolute confidence” in the plan prepared by ULS do Algarve, but stressed that this plan must “be adjusted if there is suddenly a need” for resources, or to modify the response.
“And if there is a need, you can be sure that all the support that the Algarve region needs will appear”, she assured, arguing that the important thing is to have a plan and that it “suits the peaks of urgency”, more than the minister is saying the number of doctors or nurses needed.
