CHUA argues that "has done everything" to ensure health care in the Algarve

The Hospital and University Center of the Algarve (CHUA), which integrates the Hospitals of Faro, Portimão and Lagos, guarantees, in a statement, that “it has done everything in its power to guarantee the scales and the capacity to respond in an emergency”. 

The note, issued this Tuesday, July 9, follows the news that exposed the case of a 28 weeks pregnant who, last weekend, had to be transferred from the Algarve to Évora. 

The situation, explains the CHUA, "was not due to the lack of health professionals, but to clinical reasons evaluated by the medical team of Portimão, taking into account that the occupation of the Neonatology Unit was full at that time."

The patient was then «transferred directly from Portimão to the Hospital de Évora», without going through Faro (the only Maternity that was actually working this past weekend).

According to the University Hospital Center of the Algarve, the «Neonatology Unit of the Hospital Unit of Faro, the only highly differentiated unit in the provision of neonatal care integrated in CHUA, has the capacity to continue to support, in a differentiated and safe way, premature newborns or all those who need differentiated care in the field of neonatology».

"Hospitals are complex and dynamic units that work 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, and it is therefore noticeable that, at times, situations may occur that influence their responsiveness, at which time action protocols are activated within the NHS through referral to other public health units, in accordance with the rules defined by the hospital referral networks», he adds.

Even so, the truth is that CHUA recognizes, in the same communiqué, the "lack of medical specialists".

The situation has been rectified with requests, from several NHS hospitals, "for temporary provision of professionals, possibility of establishing protocols for doctors and other specialists", in addition to contact "with companies providing medical services and also the opening of admissions exams for doctors, which have been deserted for lack of candidates», he concludes.