Palmira Hendricks, 77, and Ana Calvinho, 71, still have to wear sunglasses when they leave the house, even if it's not very sunny. They are two of the most recent elderly women in the municipality of Vila Real de Santo António to undergo cataract surgery, as part of the «Care» Program, and protecting their eyes from excess light is a precaution in the first days after the intervention.
Palmira Hendricks is a skilled cook, famous for her chicken moamba and shrimp curry. However, in recent years, due to the falls, she could no longer see enough to be able to cook at ease and needed to enlist the help of her son, who lives with her in the house on the Cevadeira farm, in the parish of Vila Nova de Cacela.
«I could only make my life with a lot of difficulty. I was sitting here [on the sofa] and the tears were running down my face», recalls Dona Palmira, to the report of Sul Informação.
Palmira Hendricks is one of those cases of people who, in need of ophthalmic interventions, spent years and years, in her case four years, waiting to be called by the National Health Service.
“The first time I went to the doctor about my eyes was 15 years ago, but it was a private consultation. Then, four years ago I was feeling worse, worse and worse, and I went to the Health Center who told me that I had to go to the Hospital of Faro. I've been waiting for this consultation for four years and nothing», he said.
Through the «Care» Program, Dona Palmira went to a consultation in Vila Real de Santo António in September last year and, on January 20, underwent surgery. «I was operated on precisely on the day I had my first appointment at the Hospital of Faro. There I had been waiting for four years and only went to the consultation. Here I waited four months and was immediately operated on,” he said.
"Being near here made me very easy", he added, making a point of stressing how he was "very well treated, very well monitored" throughout the process, by the VRSA Chamber team, by the mayor himself ("I never expected that, without knowing me, he would do this for me»), for the doctor and his team.
Ana Calvinho, 71, a former canning worker, lives in Monte Gordo, and tells a similar story. «Three years ago I went to my family doctor at the Health Center, he sent me for a consultation at the Hospital de Faro, but they never told me anything again. I waited and waited and a neighbor said to me: “you have your eyesight like that, why don't you go to the City Hall?”». And she went.
«In my left eye I could see almost nothing, I already had a very hard cataract, the doctor who now operated on me even told me. It cost me to cook, to cook. I often cooked, but then I had to ask my husband: see if everything is ok».
Dona Ana Calvinho also had “a lot of difficulty” watching television. "Sometimes I had to do this" and blinks his left eye to show it.
Through the “Care” Programme, after a consultation in October, the elderly woman also ended up being operated on in mid-January. And now, she says, proud to receive the report from Sul Informação in his office, «I can see everything very well, very clearly, I'm not even afraid to go out».
But it wasn't just his left eye that saw well. “I also have a thyroid problem and they also solved me, with this program from the Chamber. I've already been to Lisbon for a consultation at the specialist and I'm taking the medication».
Ana Calvinho does not hide how grateful she is for the help she received, through the «Care» Program… and for the action of the mayor, who has even personally visited the patients. “Blessed is the hour when the president looked out for the poor. If it weren't for this, we would all be blind, thrown into a corner».
In an interview with Sul Informação, the mayor of Vila Real de Santo António, the social democrat Luís Gomes, recalls that the «Care» Program was created jointly by his local authority and by that of Olhão, whose president António Miguel Pina is even from the PS.
And why move forward together with Olhão? «It has a lot to do with personal relationships, I've known the mayor of Olhão for a long time, we share the same concerns in many things», explains Luís Gomes.
The Vilarreal mayor is keen to stress that this program that unites City Councils of different political colors it is “a signal for the country and for the region”, indicating that “there are things where the political party flags should be hidden”.
«We all have concern for people, regardless of the political colors we defend, it cannot be from the PSD, PS or PCP as if it is Benfica or Sporting, it is not a club blindness. What unites mayors are causes, which cut across party issues. We had a common cause, which was to treat these people».
The objective, explained Luís Gomes, was “to create economies of scale”, since, “if we give some scale, the effort is very reduced, sharing costs. This is an excellent example of what the State could have done a long time ago, safeguarding resources, creating consensus and will on the part of the municipalities and solving the population's problem».
And, in the future, could the program be extended to other municipalities? “We have another 4 or 5 municipalities that want to join, but I still can't disclose it. But soon others will join», he admitted.
For now, it's just the Municipalities of Vila Real de Santo António and Olhão to integrate the program. To give it a body, they hired the ophthalmologist António Gaspar and signed another contract with the Hospital de Gambelas, of the Hospital Particular do Algarve (HPA Saúde) group, for the use of an operating room.
In VRSA, consultations take place at the HPA Saúde clinic there. In Olhão, they take place in a space at the local Health Centre, after an agreement between the municipality and the Regional Health Administration of the Algarve.
And that is how, in three months, since the program went into cruising speed in September of last year, they have guaranteed access for needy users to thousands of specialized consultations and dozens of surgeries.
«In three months we have already given more than 1000 consultations in each of the two municipalities» of VRSA and Olhão, recalls, with pride, Mayor Luís Gomes.
Thus, in Vila Real, 1171 consultations had already been carried out and, by the end of February, fifty surgeries. In Olhão, there were 1045 consultations and 32 surgeries in the same period. In this second county, there are already signs, so far, about 70 more surgical interventions for cataracts.
The largest number of consultations has been made by people aged 55 and over, in both municipalities, although this trend is even more pronounced in VRSA, where older users represent 59% of the total, against 54,9% in Olhão .
António Miguel Pina, mayor of Olhão, argues that the 2216 consultations already carried out in the two municipalities and the more than 80 surgeries «reveal the poor quality of health that exists in the Algarve. I hope the Minister of Health recognizes him and helps the people of Olho and the Algarve. Because these people, without possessions and without health, only have the support of proximity from the local authorities».
Luís Gomes, on the other hand, highlights his already long struggle against the deficient ophthalmology services in the Algarve, recalling that the background of this program began with «the 300 people that we have taken to Cuba since 2007, due to having verified what was public , that the average period for a consultation in the NHS was 4 years and for an operation was 6 to 8 years».
Even today, he stresses, «the Algarve Hospital Center does not have nearly enough ophthalmologists to cover people's needs», so «we created this program to democratize this access to ophthalmology, which means access to vision», because «ophthalmology it is a private specialty in Portugal” and “today there are more people who do not have the means to go to a private ophthalmology consultation, due to the economic crisis”.
But the program is not just about consultations, it also advances to therapy. «What appears most are cataract surgeries, but we have also done a lot to prevent some ophthalmic pathologies. As people do not have the money to pay for an appointment out of their pocket, if it wasn't for this project, there were many who didn't even know about their illnesses until it was too late», says Luís Gomes.
In which cases? “For example, glaucoma. There is a large percentage of patients who have a set of pathologies, such as glaucoma, which can cause blindness, but as there were no screenings, much less consultations, people went blind without knowing why».
Through this program, «we have a personalized treatment, which aims to put the human being first». A program in which municipalities, “even without having financial capacity, have to replace the functions that belong to the State”. And users are grateful.
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