Constitutional “right to health” not being assured
The National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians is filing a complaint with the EU Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights because it believes that emergency medical services in Portugal do not guarantee the right to health laid down in the Constitution.
In a statement, the National Association of Emergency Medical Technicians (ANTEM) accuses the governments of recent years of inertia – saying the system that Portugal has in place “profoundly contradicts the most basic practices and ways of managing any effective, patient-focused Emergency Medical Service”.
These complaints come in a supremely complicated context: emergency medical technicians are on a protracted strike leaving hundreds of people calling the national emergency number ‘hanging on’, sometimes for so long the emergency develops into a ‘tragedy’, as seen over the last few days.
The government has already announced an internal audit of INEM “to assess the conditions in which two deaths occurred in recent days due to alleged delays in answering the 112 line” – but the crisis in itself is not changing: hundreds of calls remain stacked up on any given day, to the extent that fire stations have advised populations to call them direct, and not even bother with the 112 line, writes tabloid Correio da Manhã this morning.
Added to that the fact that the internal audit is not expected to be completed before the end of the month…
ANTEM’s belief is that the provision of emergency medical care needs “appropriate education, with professionals who are highly educated and trained in Pre-Hospital Medicine” and that it is “an art” quite different from the provision of first aid.
In its statement, the association recalls that the provision of first aid has been “recognised since the 1970s as insufficient for a system that is supposed to be organised, functional and effective” and regrets that successive governments have not promoted “restructuring or any other measures” to “minimize the harmful effects of a distorted system, based on corporatist interests and not on the supreme interest of patients”.
ANTEM reiterates that Portugal’s emergency medical system “does not serve the interests of the country” because it does not guarantee the constitutional obligation of “the right to life, the right to health based on the dignity of the human person”.
“In some cases subjecting citizens to suffering due to delays and lack of emergency medical care, often culminating in long-term hospitalizations, morbidity and death”.
Thus, ”in view of the inaction on this matter by successive governments, two complaints are being drawn up, addressed to the European Court and the Court of Human Rights.”
Source material: LUSA
