Two new vehicles for organ transport were delivered by the Government yesterday, to the GNR, which has carried out more than 1,400 transports across the country in the last five years.
The delivery ceremony of the vehicles took place at the Clinical Center of the National Republican Guard and was attended by the Minister of Internal Administration, Eduardo Cabrita, the Assistant Secretary of State and Health, António Lacerda Sales, and the commander-general of GNR, Rui Clergy.
At the ceremony, Lieutenant-General Rui Clero, stated that the vehicles provide “the specifications of safety and speed appropriate to the noble mission of organ transplants throughout the national territory”.
“The provision of these two vehicles allows us to enhance the response capacity of GNR to the countless requests it has throughout the year”, said Rui Clero, noting that “in the last five years 1,434 transports were carried out, covering 290 thousand kilometers, equivalent to seven orbits of the planet, and involving 2,882 military personnel”.
The Minister of Internal Administration stressed, for his part, the importance of “placing two vehicles with very particular capabilities, speed and modification of driving characteristics, at the service of one of the most noble functions that the Republican National Guard has performed, in conjunction with the National Health Service, which is the urgent transport of organs to provide transplants”.
“There were around 1,700 organs that saved lives in the last five years,” said Eduardo Cabrita, adding that the vehicles are now available, one at the Comando do Porto and the other at the Comando de Lisboa.
António Lacerda Sales added, in turn, that the two vehicles are “properly suited” to organ transplantation, with the respective safety, and will be “another contribution” to one of the major missions of the National Health Service, transplants.
"Although there has been some decrease in this area [due to the pandemic], we are one of the countries that transplant most," Lacerda Sales told reporters at the end of the ceremony.
During the ceremony, a protocol was also signed between the GNR and the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Central, for the provision of human and material resources to the NHS.
Original article available in Portuguese at http://postal.pt/
