The Parliamentary Group of the PCP demanded from the Government the "urgent hiring of more than 800 health professionals in need in the Algarve region", during the parliamentary hearing to the Minister of Health, which took place this Wednesday.
The communists base their demand on figures from the Regional Health Administration (ARS) of Algave, which point to the lack of “823 health professionals in the Algarve, both in terms of primary health care and in terms of hospital care”.
The data provided by the president of ARS Algarve João Moura Reis, in a hearing held in Parliament last week, reveal, according to the PCP, that there is a lack of «282 doctors (183 doctors in hospitals + 99 in health centers), 159 nurses (126 + 33), 15 senior technicians (8 + 7), 22 diagnostic and therapeutic technicians (8 + 14), 101 technical assistants (42 + 59) and 244 operational assistants (114 + 130)' in the region.
At the level of physicians, the numbers are in line with those recently advanced by the Portuguese Medical Association, which estimates that more than 250 clinicians are lacking in the region, including 100 general and family medicine doctors and between 100 and 200 doctors at hospital level. With regard to nurses, the numbers are much lower of 350 missing nurses reported in April by the Union of Portuguese Nurses. In this case, it is already underway. the process of hiring 45 nurses.
A recruitment process that minister Paulo Macedo highlighted, at yesterday's hearing, adding that the Government intends to hire more doctors of general and family medicine and other specialties, some of them foreign, for the Algarve region.
An announcement that did not convince the communists to lower the tone of criticism, as they consider that "the hiring of some doctors or nurses, announced by the Minister of Health, falls far short of what is needed."
«The lack of more than eight hundred health professionals in the Algarve translates into a marked deterioration in the health care provided to the population, as an example, the impossibility of the Albufeira Basic Emergency Service to receive users with injuries due to lack of operational assistants to sanitize the facilities, the closure or the deficient functioning of the Loulé Basic Emergency Service due to lack of doctors, the scandalous waiting times for outpatient consultations in hospitals in Faro and Portimão of users referenced by health centers in the region, which in some specialties reach several years», considers the Parliamentary Group of the PCP.
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