The Minister of Health is committed to ending "undue hardship" in the Algarve as calm descends on the strife-torn regional health service.
Minister Adalberto Campos Fernandes intends to encourage doctors and health professionals to move to the region, and gave as an example the creation of the Academic Centre for Research and Biomedical Training at the University of the Algarve.
The "undue hardship" has been caused by the lack of doctors in the Algarve and the solution of transferring them to other hospitals outside the region is hardly a long-term solution, although it is one that will continue until the Algarve again has a full team.
Fernandes has committed himself to a May 31st (2016) deadline to sort out the staffing problems in the Algarve’s public hospitals, something the previous regional director Dr Pedro Nunes did not manage in four years.
The minister said the Algarve will not start the summer season with unacceptable difficulties brought about by staff shortages.
Adalberto Campos Fernandes was in the Algarve at the presentation ceremony for a new plan for the Algarve Health Region and to welcome his new Board of Directors of the Hospitals of the Algarve group; a group which he intends to dismantle when he has a moment.
The minister said that in the meantime, "any patient in the Algarve that is sitting endlessly on a waiting list has the possibility, if desired, to be treated in Lisbon."
It is easy to criticise the previous regime under Dr Nunes whose management style politely could be described as dictatorial and high-handed. The last straw was his suggestion that the region's sporting clubs should not host weekend events for fear of accidents that would need orthopaedic treatment as there were no specialists available at weekends.
The president of mayors’ group AMAL, Jorge Botelho, said after today's ceremony that he liked what he heard, but now expects some action. Botelho said that the speech was "frankly encouraging" and the Minister of Health and the new directors of the Algarve’s hospitals are entitled to a "state of grace" from the mayors of the Algarve.
Botelho, who also is the mayor of Tavira, said he sees the diagnosis made by the new minister as an accurate interpretation of the views of both patients and medical staff and an acceptance that the standards of medical care in the Algarve was below those of the rest of the country.
Shipping patients north does not bother Jorge Botelho, "The fact they can go to Lisbon or other hospitals is a short-term response to the Algarve’s health service problems but it does not seem bad. What seems wicked is that services in the region are not responsive, consultations and surgery are postponed and people are sent home without treatment."
The new minister aims to eradicate the staffing problems in the Algarve. Quite how he will achieve this remains to be seen but patients, doctors and medical staff wish him well.
