João Nascimento lives and works in Sagres, where he runs a maritime tourism company with his wife, Carla Costa. João is a patient with Multiple Sclerosis (MS) and, when he has the outbreaks (episodes in which the disease worsens and presents symptoms), until now he only had to travel 50 kilometers to go to the Hospital do Barlavento Algarvio, in Portimão, and receive the medication that he would have to keep for the next seven days.
“With this, we spent a morning going back and forth, but we could still keep the company open and work”, explains Carla Costa.
Only now, one of the two doctors from the Neurology Service of the hospital in Portimão has left and her approximately 150 patients have been left without any support. «I've already been there to ask how it's going to be now, and they told me that we'll have to go to Faro», explains Carla Costa. It takes about 240 kilometers to go to Faro and return to Sagres, at least a whole day of lost work, for a week. "It's impossible for us to continue like this," he guarantees.
This is, in essence, yet another situation that can be attributed, at least in part, to the progressive dismantling of the services and services of the Portimão hospital, since its integration into the Centro Hospital do Algarve (CHA), a situation that its maximum responsible has been engaged in denying.
Carla Costa, on her behalf and especially on behalf of her husband, as well as Maria Filomena Conceição, also MS patient and president of the Barlavento Multiple Sclerosis Association, were, so far, the only two authors of written complaints about situation, entered in the hospital's Complaints Book.
“But there are more than a hundred people affected by this situation, people who, like me, were accompanied by Dr. Edmeia Monteiro, some of them for over ten years, and to whom the hospital administration was unable to say anything, informing about the new situation and explaining what we will have to do now», explains Filomena Conceição.
The monitoring that MS patients received, until now, at the Hospital de Portimão, was almost unique at the national level, having even been the subject of television reports given the exemplary way in which it worked. Is that the patients, instead of going to the general emergency room of the hospital every time they had an outbreak, they went directly to the Neurology Service, where they were given priority and therefore were treated quickly, starting almost immediately to receive the medication needed to alleviate the symptoms of the outbreak of this chronic, incurable and debilitating disease.
«Now we have, it seems, to go to Faro, which is much further away, and go to the Emergency Room, wait for us to be seen, who knows when. And there may be doctors there who don't know our history. How will it be?”, asks Sandra Geraldo, who is also MS.
Patients and their families also do not know if, because they have to go to the Emergency Room, they will not have to pay the fee, when before, in the Neurology Service, they were exempt.
«And what about the medication, which has to be delivered to us at the hospital pharmacy? Which doctor will be responsible for this? Will it be here in Portimão? We will also have to go to Faro?”, asks Filomena Conceição.
These are questions for which, despite the two complaints made, the telephone and personal contacts, the letter addressed by the Association to the administration of the Hospital do Barlavento Algarvio (now integrated in the Centro Hospitalar do Algarve) and other entities, patients with Multiple Sclerosis and their family members remain unanswered. «Dr. Edmeia says that one of the things we need is emotional stability, to reduce stress in our lives. Now this whole situation of uncertainty makes us nervous and worried, and it's not good for our condition», stresses Sandra Geraldo.
In addition to the difficulty of large travel, especially for patients who live in more peripheral municipalities such as Vila do Bispo, Aljezur or Monchique, and who until now had a quality response in Portimão, there is also the question of expenses. «To go to Faro there is no public transport in good condition, a lot of time is wasted. And not even an MS patient with an outbreak can go on public transport. Ambulance is expensive and only the patient can go, not a companion. And who has more mobility difficulties? Who is bedridden or in a wheelchair? And who doesn't have the money to pay for these trips, how do they do it?”, asks the president of the Association.
But there are still other problems. In Portimão, there was monitoring by the Neurology team (doctors, nurses, auxiliary staff) at the weekend, which meant that, in the event of an outbreak, the patient could go to the Barlavento hospital to receive their medication and return to home, even on Saturday and Sunday. "Now in Faro we are told that if the outbreak starts, for example, on a Friday, we will have to be hospitalized over the weekend, with all the disadvantages that this has», says Ana Maria Cristina, another MS patient, residing in Portimão.
«It took years to build a competent, quality Neurology service, with a team we could count on. We had a kind of Urgency directed to Multiple Sclerosis, which gave us another comfort. And now, suddenly, who knows why, but maybe to save half a dozen euros, that's an end to it», laments Sandra Geraldo.
«The Neurology in Portimão worked very well, there was a permanent nurse. The most we expected to be treated was 30, 40 minutes, and we started the treatment right away. Now we have to go to a normal emergency room, to a hospital that is much further away, wait for screening, run the risk of the doctor misdiagnosing us because he doesn't know our history», adds Ana Maria Cristina.
The Barlavento Multiple Sclerosis Association wrote last week a letter to the CHA administration asking for clarification on the situation, but so far it has not received any response. In the letter, which was posted on social media, the Association reports the lack of information about what is happening with MS patients in the Barlavento Algarve.
“The problem is that we don't know who to go to, nobody gives us answers!” stresses Sandra Geraldo. “Everything they are doing to us with this process is only doing us harm,” he adds.
«What they are doing, by gradually ending the support we had at Neurology in Portimão, is treating a chronic patient as if he were a patient who cuts a finger and goes to the Emergency Room», laments João Nascimento.
«And if the argument is to reduce costs, have you done the math well? Will the shift to Faro and isn't all the stress associated with that going to increase people's outbreaks? Doesn't this cause more costs, in addition to the negative effects it will have on the health of chronic patients like us?”, still asks João.
«The hospital in Portimão had an excellent team for these cases, it had all the necessary equipment. Faro they don't have a Neurology team like they used to be here. What they are doing is a crime!” concludes Carla Costa.
O Sul Informação it has already contacted the administration of the Hospital de Portimão and the Hospital Center of the Algarve to ask for clarification on this situation.
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