FNAM, the National Federation of Doctors, has called a strike to coincide with the public sector workers’ strike already scheduled for October 24.
The reasons centre on the impasse with health ministry negotiators (over salaries/ conditions) and the fact that FNAM believes health minister Ana Paula Martins “has presented decisions that put the population at risk”.
FNAM’s announcement followed a meeting today with Minister Martins which the union described as “the presentation of a fait accompli with measures that we believe are really harmful to the population and the SNS (state health service),” FNAM president Joana Bordalo e Sá told Lusa.
According to FNAM, the government plans to concentrate emergency services at regional level, meaning that “it will leave pregnant women and newborn babies without neighbourhood care”.
“The concrete example is the south bank (south of Lisbon). Pregnant women will have to continue to travel kilometres and kilometres to access emergency care, (because of the) closing of obstetrics emergency services in Barreiro and Setúbal,” said the FNAM president.
Criticising the lack of “good collective bargaining practice and good negotiating faith”, Bordalo e Sá warned that the government is essentially ignoring the needs of the SNS by leaving the way wide-open to private alternatives.
Source material: LUSA
