Public health in the Algarve took a significant step today with the laying of the first stone of a new building in Loulé, an investment of around 5 million euros that will bring some innovations to the region, strengthening health care in the municipality.
Like the Sul Informação reported last tuesday, the project for the new health services building, which will be erected next to the current Health Center, serving as a support for it and allowing its expansion, was born out of a public competition for ideas launched by the municipality of Loulé. The space will have four distinct valences, divided over two floors, interconnected, but with independent circuits.
On the ground floor, in a more public area with easy access, there will be the “Lauroé” Family Health Unit, currently operating in containers next to the Municipal Pavilion, intended for 14 users, but also the Care Unit for the “Gentes de Loulé” Community, for 70 thousand users.
On the upper floor, it will add the facilities of the Central Group of Health Centers in the Algarve – ACES Central and its headquarters – which will move from Faro to Loulé - as well as a University Health Center.
«The latter is of special importance as it will have an innovative character throughout the country. Aimed at pre- and post-graduate education, a space is projected for here where professionals can teach in all areas of health, whether in medicine or other professions», underlines the Câmara de Loulé.
These services will work in conjunction with the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Algarve, but, in addition to the UAlg, you can integrate students from other academies for internships or professionals who are doing their specialization.
As Vítor Aleixo explained, “this will be, if not the first, of the first health centers in Portugal with this valence”. This implies that the health care provided here becomes certified, and as such, “object of greater demand”.
Overall, the building's space will be organized “with great flexibility” because it will allow, in future terms, adjustments to be made in terms of the interior compartmentalisation.
On the other hand, parking outside the current Health Center will be reinforced and circulation reformulated with a new street and a new access to the North.
And if images of the poor conditions existing at the Loulé Health Center were widely disseminated in the media and social networks, the mayor Vítor Aleixo underlined the importance of this work in the future of the services provided here. “Not only because of the number of medical offices but because of the conditions of care for patients. Health professionals, doctors, nurses, administrative staff, cleaning staff, all of them will have more dignified conditions to perform their work, and users will benefit from all this, the quality of service will increase”, he assured.
During his speech, Vítor Aleixo recalled the various actors involved in this project, namely the former Secretary of State for Health Jamila Madeira, who approved the work, but also the doctors Carlos Sousa and Rui Lourenço, the latter former president of the ARS who celebrated, in 2010, a protocol with the Municipality, which is at the genesis of this work.
A document that was resumed in 2016, with the change of the municipal and government executive, for a project that is only now starting to see the light of day. “It has been a project that has been desired for many years, worked on for many years, which had to overcome various obstacles, some of a bureaucratic nature, the combination and will of the different decision makers”, said the mayor.
But if this is certainly the largest project planned for the municipality, the mayor recalled that other interventions are being carried out in the area of health in this territory. In Quarteira, at a time when an intervention is taking place, “with temporary devices”, in the extension of the Health Centre, the population growth and the consequent increase in users of services provided by the SNS foresees the need for “very ambitious projects” for this parish. The Chamber is therefore looking for a location for new equipment in Quarteira.
In Almancil, the expansion work of the Health Center will soon be inaugurated, with the creation of another 8 medical offices, on the 1st floor of the Parish Council building.
Also in Loulé, alongside the work launched today, the mayor also announced that the executive “will work to have a project to recover the 'Serra Mar' Family Health Unit”, a service that operates in the existing building.
Regarding the transfer of competence in the area of health from the central to the local administration, Vítor Aleixo assured that “in Loulé, the health centers will be more cared for, tidier, more equipped”.
On the ARS side, president Paulo Morgado said that, when it is completed, this equipment will be able to “serve more people, with more quality, and have more professionals working here”.
“In the health centers of the future, we will not only hire more professionals, but also put more services in the health centers, we will have more analyses, more diagnostic tests that are practically non-existent at the moment, and for that we need space… more psychologists, more dieticians, more occupational or speech therapists, I have to have offices for them to work”, he added.
«On the part of the Municipality, nothing will be lacking to attract more health professionals here and it is also with them in mind that the municipality has developed a Housing Strategy, which currently has several housing projects underway in the municipality», adds the municipality. Chamber.
The work on the new health building in Loulé will have an investment of around 5 million euros, 65% by the Chamber and 35% by the Ministry of Health through the ARS. The expected execution period is 900 days.
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