Yesterday’s horrific weather battering forced a couple trying to get to hospital for the birth of their baby to ‘hole up’ at a motorway service station near Loulé at which point their infant decided it was time to make her appearance.
News channels have made a point of saying “this was not another birth as parents tried to access the SNS health service”. This couple had apparently chosen to have their baby in a private hospital in Faro (some news sources cite “because Portimão’s maternity services were closed” but a press release has gone out to newspapers from the Algarve health unit’s press department to say ‘this isn’t the case’): the parents just didn’t make their destination in time.
Thus, the birth of Luísa may not go down as further reason for the health minister to ‘speak to the country’ over the litany of births in unlikely places as pregnant women run the gauntlet of staggered services. But it does stand as a reminder that this far, the health minister hasn’t said a word following the challenge by presidential candidate Luís Marques Mendes, who considers the number of children being born on public highways and byways to be a national disgrace.
In fact, yesterday’s birth was billed by SIC as a ‘good news story’ in a day marked by bad news regionally.
Baby Luísa is her parents’ second child. She arrived weighing over 3 kilos, and was pronounced by off-duty firefighter Álvaro Marques (president of Silves’ bikers’ club), who was on hand to help, as “reactive” and “already yawning”.
