The head of the Algarve Local Health Unit (ULS), the region’s health board, Tiago Botelho, is to be dismissed following three deaths linked to Portimão Hospital, one of them a child, Health Minister Ana Paula Martins announced Botelho’s departure on Monday, 9 November, in an interview with CMTV.
The minister argued that “the emergency department is not working well, because if it were, cases like these would not happen”. She insisted that Botelho “was warned several times about the situations that were occurring” at Portimão’s A&E, where “it is the norm for there to be doctors who cannot examine or take on patients”.
Martins also revealed that she has asked the General Inspectorate of Health Activities (IGAS) to open an investigation into how Portimão’s emergency services are run.
The controversy began with the death of an 87-year-old man in the early hours of Wednesday. 4 November, in Portimão Hospital’s emergency department. According to the information released, he waited around 12 hours to be seen by a doctor and died without ever receiving treatment.
The following day, the ULS Algarve board announced an internal inquiry to establish the circumstances of his death. It said it was willing to cooperate with the relevant authorities, including IGAS, and stressed the need to await the findings before drawing conclusions about who might be responsible.
At the same time, the board confirmed that the head of the emergency department had been replaced. It maintained, however, that the decision stemmed from a review of how the service is organised, which began before the patient died.
A second case then emerged, involving a 94-year-old man who, according to published reports, went about 24 hours without seeing a doctor before he died.
More recently came news of a two-year-old child who died at Faro Hospital on 22 October after being sent from Portimão. The case was made public by PS secretary-general José Luís Carneiro. The Correio da Manhã newspaper then established that the child was a little girl who had choked on a grape and was taken to Portimão’s paediatric emergency department, which was closed at the time due to lack of staff. She was still taken on to Faro, but died before being able to receive the necessary treatment to save her life.
The three cases have also prompted the president of the Portuguese Medical Association to call publicly for accountability for the deaths, with multiple investigations into the hospital’s conduct now ongoing.
Source: LUSA / CMTV
Photo credit: Sul Informação
