Postponed surgeries and outpatient consultations in hospitals in the Algarve and constraints in primary health care units are consequences of the strike called by the Independent Doctors Union (SIM) that began today, a union source told Lusa.
Speaking to Lusa, the SIM's Algarve regional secretary João Dias said that adherence to the strike is "quite high", around 93,5% and reflected, above all, in the postponement of external consultations and non-urgent surgeries, which are forcing users to return home.
«We are being pushed by the Government into a situation that we tried to avoid as much as possible. Increasingly, there is a lack of responsiveness in the operating theaters and consultations, because there are fewer people, and I don't know where this will end. But the Government is not managing to solve the problem in this way», he underlined.
According to João Dias, the operating rooms at the Centro Hospitalar Universitário do Algarve (CHUA), which brings together the hospitals of Faro, Portimão and Lagos, are operating with the minimum services and all surgeries that are not considered urgent are being postponed.
«Many of these patients are, sometimes, waiting three or four months for an appointment, or five or six months waiting for a surgery and now they return home waiting for it to be rescheduled. But it is not known when it will be rescheduled, because in the coming weeks there are other patients already scheduled», he lamented.
According to the union leader, doctors are being trained in public hospitals to then «leave to the private sector», as professionals, from year to year, are «falling into dismay» and end up thinking that it is best to leave for the private sector.
«The Algarve has to have enough capacity to respond to the population it serves, it cannot be in a situation where it does not have dermatologists, does not have haematologists, does not have endocrinologists and in which the Orthopedics service is at the very least», he stressed.
In addition to these specialties, Gynecology and Obstetrics «is reduced to a third of the staff», and paediatrics, with two maternity hospitals operating «practically five days a week, not to say six, does not have a pediatrician in Portimão and, at other times, there is no pediatrician in Faro», he insisted.
«We have patients waiting to be operated on in the Algarve, they cannot get an answer and what is the agreement? An agreement is made with hospitals such as Riba d'Ave [in Braga], which is the farthest place in the country, there was no place further away, only in Spain», he criticized.
According to João Dias, doctors are on strike «not only to have better conditions and attractiveness for professionals to remain in the National Health Service, but above all because they want the country to be able to respond».
Doctors today started a three-day national strike to force the Government to present a concrete proposal to revise the salary grid, which the Minister of Health promised on Monday to send to the unions.
Called by SIM, the stoppage takes place simultaneously with a strike by family doctors for overtime work, which started on Monday and will last for a month.
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