Final IGAS report sent to Public Prosecutor’s Office
The ‘favoritism controversy’ that broke late last year – surrounding Brazilian twin babies receiving free treatment in Portugal with “the most expensive medication in the world” thanks to strings having been pulled at the highest levels – has burst back into the national news picture today, with the story that ‘the final report’ compiled by IGAS (the general inspectorate of activities in health) has found there was indeed irregular access to a remedy costing the Portuguese national health service €4 million.
This was a scoop broken by investigative journalists on independent television station, TVI .
Coinciding with the full-blown political crisis, and yet another high-level ‘corruption probe’ (later followed by another), it bounced around the media for weeks, but then ‘faded from view’ due to the recent electoral campaign, and other more pressing stories.
Now, it has returned with this new update, auguring further bad press for President Marcelo, who remains at the heart of the drama – even though he has tried to distance himself – by dint of the fact that the request for his help, for the twins, came from his own son, a resident businessman living in Brazil for many years.
Say reports today, IGAS is sending its ‘final report’ to the Public Prosecutor’s Office which will have to decide whether the twins’ treatment by the SNS national health service implies that someone, somewhere down the complicated line, committed a crime.
“In the final report, IGAS concluded, that legal rules of access were not complied with”, writes Correio da Manhã. “At issue, for example, is the making of the first appointment for a consultation at the Neuropediatric department of Hospital Santa Maria, on December 5, 2019, through a phone call made by a secretary of António Lacerda Sales, at the time Secretary of State for Health.
“In the report, IGAS identifies all the failings the occurred throughout the process. The irregular access of the children to the SNS started with the making of that first appointment at Hospital Santa Maria (HSM), because it was made by the Secretary of State for Health to the Pediatric Department.
“For IGAS, as much as CM can verify, the Secretary of State for Health does not have the capacity to request an appointment for medical consultations.
“According to HSM’s audit of its internal control system at the end of 2023, Lacerda Sales is listed in the twins’ medical file as having requested the children’s first appointment. The fact that the twins’ first appointment was scheduled in this way did not comply with the rules laid down in article 8 of decree no. 147/2017, as the HSM’s internal audit has already noted.
“Having Portuguese nationality, the twins had to be treated in the SNS, but the intervention of the Secretary of State created an eventual favoritism in their access”.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office already has an inquiry into this case underway, the paper recalls. It was opened as a result of the initial suspicions of strings being pulled by President Marcelo, which he has denied.
CM’s story stresses that the president’s son, Nuno Rebelo de Sousa, has not been heard by IGAS for the purposes of its report – as this was simply to “analyse the actions of people who exercised functions within the country’s State health service”.
The paper also refers to the fact that Nuno Rebelo de Sousa did have a meeting with António Lacerda Sales – in which he ‘presented the case of the twins’ – in November 2019.
For now, the situation is that IGAS’ report contains “various recommendations to avoid similar situations occurring in the future”.
Whether or not this particular situation will be seen to have involved any kind of crime is what still needs to be investigated.
This story is particularly poignant as it revolves around children who were (and possibly still are) seriously ‘ill’. The twins’ treatment with Zolgensma was to ward off the potentially fatal consequences of SMA (spinal muscular atrophy) – a condition that in babies means they are prone to respiratory failure very early on in what are almost always short/ severely conditioned lives.
