The executive director of the Barlavento Health Centers Group (ACES Barlavento) resigned last week from this position, allegedly for not agreeing with the most recent guidelines of the Regional Health Administration for the sector.
Rosa Gonçalves, a doctor who is considered a historical reference for the installation of the Algarve's National Health Service, submitted her resignation "for not putting up with the bad relationship with the current presidency of the ARS and for feeling a lack of political coverage for her actions", told the Sul Informação a source close to the process.
The resigning responsible, who was the executive director of ACES Barlavento since 2009, does not want to talk about the matter, while the ARS, urged by our newspaper to comment on this resignation, said it did not want to comment on the subject.
What is certain is that, a few days after the resignation of Rosa Gonçalves from the direction of ACES Barlavento, the remaining members of the Clinical Council also resigned en bloc. The most ridiculous thing is that, to what the Sul Informação found out from various sources linked to the process, the doctors, nurses and other technicians who were part of this Clinical Council and who resigned were all called to Faro, for separate meetings, one by one, with Martins dos Santos, president of the ARS. «They were called to Faro at different times, to ask them why they resigned," guaranteed one of the sources.
With this massive resignation of those responsible for ACES Barlavento, the Health Centers of the covered municipalities are left without direction, namely, Portimão, Lagos, Lagoa, Aljezur, Vila do Bispo and Monchique.
«Since this board of directors is at the head of the ARS, the ACES, especially the one from Barlavento, feel like they've been thrown overboard. The opening of the Portimão Health Center, last year, for example, was a very, very difficult process, with Dr. Rosa Gonçalves inventing solutions to all the numerous problems that arose. But they managed to open this new Health Center!”, added the source contacted by our newspaper.
Rosa Maria Silvério Gonçalves is considered a historical doctor of the NHS in the Algarve. He came to the region in 1975, having installed the Monchique Health Center, at a time when resources were scarce. Over the years, it has always been linked to the consolidation of the NHS and the primary care network in the Algarve region.
As executive director of ACES Barlavento, she was responsible, for example, for finding solutions to provide doctors (Cuban and Colombian) to the Health Centers and respective extensions of Vila do Bispo and Aljezur. He also led the difficult process of the new Health Center in Portimão, where, in fact, ACES Barlavento is based.
About a year ago, on April 3, 2012, the order of the Ministry of Health's Office was published in Diário da República, which renewed, for a new period of three years, the service commission of Rosa Gonçalves as executive director of the Group of Health Centers of Algarve II – Barlavento.
The order invoked “their technical competence, management capacity and adequate specific training evidenced in the exercise of their management functions”, stressing that the renewal was carried out “under proposal of the directive council of the Regional Health Administration of the Algarve”.
Everything indicates that Martins dos Santos, with the creation of the Centro Hospitalar do Algarve, which will result from the merger of hospitals in Faro, Portimão and Lagos, will leave the presidency of the Algarve Regional Health Administration precisely to head the new mega Hospital Centre. The departure of Rosa Gonçalves from ACES Barlavento will allow Martins dos Santos to leave someone he trusts in this strategic place.
One of the sources contacted by Sul Informação speculates, on the other hand, that, if that happens, “Martins dos Santos will be in control of health in the Algarve, leaving primary health care in question, but also the ARS in hospital, instead of the other way around. Hospitals are bankrupt and have no prospect of adequate funding and all that remains is to destroy the ACES, which are the Health Center Networks».
All questions for which our newspaper would like to hear the opinion of the president of ARS do Algarve, but which, given his refusal to comment on the matter, remain unanswered.
As for the new direction of ACES Barlavento, and after the insistence of the Sul Informação with a new question, the ARS Board of Directors informed that «Dr. Rosa Gonçalves remains in office, with the same responsibilities, until the new Board of ACES Barlavento is appointed and starts functions».
The Board of Directors also made a point of clarifying a question of semantics, saying that this is not a resignation, but a “resignation from office”.
And it reinforces what the Sul Informação I had already written above: «the Executive Director of ACES Barlavento, Dr. Rosa Gonçalves, was renamed by the CD of ARS Algarve IP in 2012 (Order nº4718/2012, 3 April 2012)».
Updated at 17:30 pm, adding the clarifications provided by the Board of Directors of ARS Algarve, at the request of the Sul Informação.
Comments