August, September peppered with strike dates
Hot-on-the-heels of yesterday’s nationwide strike, SEP – the Portuguese nurses union – has announced no less than 12 new strikes for August, including 10 ‘partial strikes’, starting on Monday.
Said SEP’s president José Carlos at a press conference near Lisbon’s Hospital de São José: “We have a plan for continued struggles. There are no atomic bombs in this process, so it is a persistent, ongoing, systematically organised struggle that will take place in August, already with 10 partial strikes” that will move on to “national and longer strikes” in September”.
These new forms of struggle will go ahead unless the Ministry of Health moves towards “sensible, fair and reasonable positions”, he said.
According to the union leader, Monday will see a sit-in at Guarda Local Health Unit, with Tuesday seeing a strike in Viseu.
The programme of strike action appears to be scheduled for different areas, on different days.
Yesterday’s strike affected hospitals all over the country, with consultations coming off relatively lightly (79.1% did manage to go ahead), but programmed surgeries suffering markedly (only 34.9% were undertaken).
Meantime, this weekend sees several A&E departments (all focused on either children or obstetrics/ gynecology) closed – 11 in total today; 13 tomorrow.
According to the SNS state health service site, the A&E services closed today are Chaves (pediatrics), obstetrics/ gynecology in Almada/ Seixal, Amadora/ Sintra, Leiria and Lisbon (São Francisco Xavier and obstetrics in Lisbon (Santa Maria) and Portimão, in the Algarve.
Tomorrow, the list is the same, plus pediatric A&E in Leiria and Torres Novas.
FNAM, the federation of Portuguese doctors – also locked in a pay dispute with the government – dubs the situation “A tragedy for health service users”, as “closures are becoming normalised, and this is unacceptable. The population is being left uncovered…”
In other words, what with nurses strikes, and the lack of doctors causing services to be closed, Portugal’s national health service is limping through the summer just as millions of holidaymakers arrive (hopefully, with private health cover in case they need medical assistance).
Source material: LUSA
