The planned Saturday protest against shortages of staff, doctors, materials and sensible management at the Hospitals of the Algarve saw over five hundred people gather and form a human chain near Portimão Hospital. The protestors called for the resignation of the hospitals director, Pedro Nunes.
"Pedro Nunes the Hospitals of the Algarve director should go, and Paulo Macedo the Minister of Health should go too," was the general feeling voiced by the crowd who carried various forthright banners, some reading "Pedro Nunes - leave the Algarve in peace and go back to Lisbon," which indeed is where he lives and where he was spending the weekend, rather than in the Algarve making an effort and addressing the crowd.
The Citizens' Movement for the Defense of Public Health Services in the Algarve was certainly well supported at this event which came on the heels of a petition signed by 182 doctors which complained about the postponement of scheduled surgeries, a lack of materials and a lack of medicines.
The participants in the human chain also brought gifts for the hospitals director including diapers, gloves, needles, bandages, scissors, tape and a first aid box claiming that if Pedro Nunes needed more hospital supplies they would go back to the Chinese shop and buy them for him.
Several Algarve mayors were prominent at today’s protest including Isilda Gomes, Mayor of Portimão, who said that the only way that the Algarve can be "a sustainable and developed tourist region is by providing quality health services."
The mayor said that in Portimão Hospital "cardiology is highly deficient, and virtually non-existent in the emergency department, and there are problems in orthopedics and pediatrics and a lack of medicines and equipment.”
The mayors of Lagos and Loulé showed up too, "I want to show solidarity with all the people of the Algarve that are suffering the consequences of an utterly aggressive policy," said Loule’s Vítor Aleixo stressing that mayors can not stand by and do nothing as the right to even adequate health care is slowly being removed.
José Amarelinho from Aljezur was disgusted by the fact that the Algarve’s 16 mayors had requested an urgent meeting with the Minister of Health to discuss the the Algarve’s healthcare provision and more than two weeks later they had not yet had the courtesy of a response.
According to the Mayor of Lagos, the Algarve needs "more money for healthcare, needs more doctors, more beds and no more closure of services,” adding that reopening some of the closed facilities would be a good start.
It did not help matters that in many of yesterday and today's national papers there was a report about the Ministry of Health spending €100,000 on coaching for its managers.
The training programme over 4 months covers 30 managers who will attend ‘workshops in time management and assertiveness, conflict management and stress management training.’
Perhaps Dr Pedro Nunes would beneoft from a place on this course as the disintegration of the Algarve's health service has now gone beyond the point where he can be taken seriously as a manager and problem solver. Many expect his resignation in the coming week and the appointment by Macedo of a heavyweight to push through the required reforms and budgetary rigour with a deft touch that involves the various stakeholders rather than alienating them.
