With media stories returned since the ‘storms crisis’ to criticising INEM (medical emergency institute) – for the time it is taking to reach 112 call-outs – and decrying the deterioration of the SNS state health service generally, this story posted by firefighters of Famalicão, shows a very human side of Portuguese healthcare: the efforts taken to ensure a terminal cancer patient got his final wish.
It wasn’t a very complex wish: he wanted to “see the sea” and breathe in the salt air. And that is just what happened.
Firefighters, working with Porto’s IPO cancer hospital, gently carried the patient to a local beach last weekend.
“There are desires that, being the last of our lives, disarm us and alert us to the essentials of life,” posted the fire station on its Facebook page.
The team said it “was able to witness the importance of respecting a person’s dignity and life until the very last moment, allowing the person to ‘enter death alive’.
Source: Facebook/ SIC Notícias
