The leader of the Socialist Party (PS), José Luís Carneiro, has announced that he will urgently call the health minister before parliament over a recent string of deaths at Portimão Hospital, explaining that he has learned of a third possibly avoidable death caused by what he believes to be the lack of a sufficiently rapid response. This follows the revelation of the death of an 87-year-old man, which rippled through newspapers last week.
“Two people died for want of medical care in the emergency department at Portimão Hospital. Since yesterday [Saturday], and because I spoke about the matter, I have been contacted to say there may have been another death, this time of a child, through a lack of response at Portimão hospital and in the transfer to Faro,” said José Luís Carneiro.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a lunch with party members in Midões, in the Coimbra municipality of Tábua, the PS leader said that this third case involves a child, who “is believed to have died in October”.
Carneiro said he had put it to the prime minister over the weekend whether the Government was keeping tabs on events at Portimão Hospital in the Algarve.
“It is very important that the prime minister explains to the Portuguese people, and to Algarve residents in particular, what has happened and what he intends to do for Algarve residents who cannot find answers in healthcare, in this case in the emergency department at Portimão Hospital,” he demanded.
In Carneiro’s view, the matter “should certainly have been raised already”, given that people have, by public account, “died for lack of response in the hospital emergency department” in Portimão.
The PS will therefore “urgently call the health minister, Ana Paula Martins, to the Assembleia da República” to answer MPs’ questions and to say “what the Government intends to do to meet the serious healthcare needs now arising, in Portimão in particular”.
Carneiro told reporters that Luís Montenegro “has a duty to clarify the circumstances in which the two deaths occurred” in the Algarve.
“The prime minister has a duty to explain publicly what happened for us to have had two deaths for lack of medical care at that hospital in Portimão,” he said.
The Socialist leader said he had spoken to the mayor of Portimão, who passed on “very worrying” information about a shortage of doctors in the emergency department and long waits for treatment.
“Several municipalities and thousands of people use Portimão Hospital every day,” Carneiro said, adding that explanations are owed “not only to the victims’ families, but also to the population served by that unit”.
Asked about the health minister’s silence, the PS secretary-general said he found the Government’s absence of a response “strange”, since political responsibility lies “first and foremost with the prime minister”.
“As far as I am concerned, the health minister has long been absent from what the Ministry of Health needs,” declared Carneiro.
Source: LUSA
Photo credit: Expresso
