The medical team of the Emergency and Resuscitation Medical Vehicles (VMER) in the Algarve region will be reinforced with 18 new professionals, who are completing a course promoted by the administration of the Algarve Hospital Center (CHA), the entity responsible for it.
The 18 doctors have been in the field for some time, as assured by the chairman of the Board of Directors of CHA Pedro Nunes, in a radio interview he granted to the Sul Informação and to Rádio Universitária do Algarve RUA FM, but until now they will have been on an internship and receiving «specific training».
Its entry into service officially takes place in "the second half of February", according to the director of the Department of Emergency, Urgency and Intensive Care of this hospital unit Luís Pereira,
This is the second specialization course in this area, aimed at CHA physicians, which has been held since 2012. The objective is to “increase the number of human resources in the area of pre-hospital emergency and remedy some of the failures recorded, occasionally, in the VMERs of Albufeira and Portimão, since the VMER of Faro has recorded an operating rate of 100 percent».
«When I arrived in Portimão, in August, (…) one of the things I noticed was that VMER was mostly inoperative. And because of the lack of doctors, it wasn't because you didn't pay," said Pedro Nunes about two weeks ago.
«I spoke with the director of the emergency department and an INEM course was opened. A fortnight ago [at the time of the interview, now about a month], 18 doctors trained in this course left for ambulance crews and, at the moment, the Algarve has two 100 percent operational VMERs in Faro and Portimão, every day, and Albufeira, most days», he said at the time. There is "a new course scheduled for March" to fill the gaps that still exist, he added.
Luís Pereira states that «at this moment, internships and specific training in the field are still taking place» and added, according to the CHA, that «the Algarve currently has a very complete and well-structured network, since, in addition to this reinforcement, of professionals in VMER, counts on INEM, which operates a vast range of land resources, as well as a helicopter based in Loulé».
«At the same time, the municipalities located in the extremes of the Algarve are also supported by ambulances with immediate life support (SIV). The leeward area has a SIV in Tavira and another in Vila Real de Santo António and on the other side has a SIV in Lagos, so all these means respond perfectly to the needs of the resident population and steering wheels», added the service director.
On the same occasion that he spoke about the new doctors with an INEM course, Pedro Nunes stressed that the merger of hospitals in Faro, Portimão and Lagos for the creation of the CHA «is allowing things to be done that people are not realizing about», something that, he believes, will only happen «in a few months».
In addition to the reinforcement of doctors at VMER, the administrator of the CHA asked INEM to put in the field "a specialized pediatric inter-hospital transport ambulance", which has "all the resuscitation equipment for newborns". «The ambulance will be manned by pediatricians from Faro, since Portimão does not have [enough] and that it will start from Faro to Portimão if there is a delivery that is getting complicated», he said.
According to Pedro Nunes, the Minister of Health assured him that he would be “personally interested in the matter” and that INEM, contacted by the CHA, was “available” to provide this service.
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