Ophthalmological screening for the elderly population residing in the interior of the county Vila Real de Santo António began this Wednesday, in an initiative of the City Council, under the program «Care».
The initiative is innovative and is covering, in the first stage, the mountainous areas of the municipality of VRSA, investing in close contacts with the population.
It involves an ophthalmologist and a group of technicians from the Social Action Division who will then refer the residents for a consultation.
With this measure, the municipality extends health care to the most remote places in the municipality, reaching, in particular, older populations or those with greater difficulties in moving around.
The project comes just a month after the creation of the «Care» program, an innovative way of sharing resources developed in partnership by the Municipal Councils of VRSA and Olhão, which allows for a quicker and closer response to the health problems of the citizens of both the Algarve councils.
To increase the scope of “Care”, the municipality of VRSA also extended the program to all employees and collaborators of the City Council and the municipal company VRSA SGU, who will have access to ophthalmology consultations at a reduced price.
The measure is also applied to employees of all Private Social Solidarity Institutions in the Municipality and Voluntary Firefighters.
For Luís Gomes, president of the VRSA City Council, the first weeks of the program present «remarkably positive results, with about a hundred and a half consultations having already been carried out, of which 40 patients were referred for surgery».
In this first phase, “Care” is focused on pathologies related to the field of ophthalmology, taking into account the new increase in waiting lists in this specialty, which currently exceeds two years in the south of the country.
In the future, it will be extended to other specialties, and may add more municipalities to this health care network that wants to be close to people and is aimed especially at citizens with low income or who have difficulties in accessing health care.
To benefit from «Care», interested parties must register with the Social Action Divisions of the VRSA and Olhão municipalities or consult the program framework available on the website www.cm-vrsa.pt.
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