The Portimão Hospital Delivery Block will be closed until 9 am next Monday, June 00th, due to the lack of pediatricians. Also the Pediatrics Emergency Service, both in Faro, as in Portimão, will be conditioned in the coming days.
The situation was revealed in a note sent to the newsrooms by the PSD deputies elected by the Algarve, who consider that "the lack of specialists between 16 pm this Friday and 00 am on Monday, 9 June, calls into question assistance to the population and forces pregnant women to travel to Faro».
Ana Varges Gomes, chairman of the Board of Directors of the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve (CHUA), confirmed to the Sul Informação the Closing of the Birthing Block, in Portimão, until Monday, but, on the contrary, what happened last week, the Emergency Gynecology/Obstetrics service will remain in operation.
According to the official, “the emergency of Gynecology and Obstetrics is open for pregnant women up to 22 weeks. Pregnant women over 22 weeks will be transferred to Faro. For this, the entire emergency device is set up, in coordination with Civil Protection, INEM, CODU and our specialist nurses, who are at the rear, so that, if any lady needs to be transferred, she can be transferred by ambulance » .
This lack of pediatricians will also cause constraints in the emergency services of this specialty, both in Faro, as in Portimão. "Are we going to have or Faro, or in Portimão, pediatric specialties in the emergency department, but it will alternate. For example, tomorrow, I know we have a pediatrician in Portimão, but we don't have Faro, and then, on Sunday, it will be the other way around».
Given the scarcity of pediatricians, «it is the general practitioners who normally provide care and resolve 90% of situations involving children. In a situation where the pediatrician's support is needed, the patient will be transferred to the place where the pediatrician is”.
With regard to emergency situations, “they will be dealt with on either side, because we always have the team that supports the pediatric intensive care emergency room, which continues to function. It's a separate scale."
Furthermore, guarantees Ana Varges Gomes, «we have pediatricians in the institutions, either in one or the other, who guarantee the support to the patients hospitalized there. We have only five pediatricians in the entire region with the capacity to do 24-hour emergencies. So it's easy to see why I don't have pediatricians. It's not because I have pediatricians on vacation, it's because the service providers don't come to work at this time and I can't force them to come».
In their statement, PSD deputies Luís Gomes, Rui Cristina and Ofélia Ramos say that, between 21 pm this Friday and 00 am this Saturday, June 9, and then again, between 00 pm tomorrow and 25 am Monday, «the Portimão Hospital will run out of pediatricians in the Pediatric Emergency Department, Neonatology, Pediatrics and Nursery».
However, Ana Varges Gomes denies that this is so: «what will be affected is the Pediatric Emergency Service in Faro, or in Portimão, and the Birthing Block in Portimão. In the internment, we will have pediatricians who guarantee that the hospitalized children are seen by a pediatrician, but being a single one cannot be in all places at the same time”, she concluded.
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