The first ‘regional gynecological/ obstetric A&E department’ has opened today at the Beatriz Ângelo hospital, in Loures, as part of the health ministry’s solution to the endless constraints that have marked recent years due to the shortage of available doctors.
The unit – which will offer specialist perinatal care – will operate 24-hours per day, seven days per week, and be the point of reference to women who need this type of care from the areas north of Lisbon, including Azambuja, Arruda dos Vinhos, Alenquer and Benavente.
The opening of the unit has meant the closure of the former maternity A&E department in Vila Franca de Xira which has been opening and closing like a yo-yo recently due to the ongoing ‘constraints’ with medical personnel.
But questions remain – and a great deal of outrage.
Syndicates, for example, point out that the ‘change’ has not resulted in any further hiring of medical specialists. Quite the opposite – and, as a result, a number of staff will find themselves obliged to travel much greater distances in order to provide their expertise.
Mayors of the areas that have ‘lost’ maternity services are furious. Fernando Paulo Ferreira, the mayor of Vila Franca de Xira, for instance, calls the decision “inadmissible” – saying the mayors of Azambuja, Arruda dos Vinhos, Alenquer and Benavente will be joining him today in telling the minister of health how angry they are.
“All five mayors will manifest their outrage over the closure of our obstetric A&E and explain the damages that this will cause around 250,000 people,,” he told Rádio Renascença.
“Four of these municipalities are outside the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon. Integrating all these people into the concept of a regional A&E department makes no sense. There aren’t even direct or simple public transports in these areas to Loures! We have an enormous degree of certainty that the concentration of A&E requirements will also overwhelm Loures – in a way that Loures does not have conditions to respond.”
In other words, in the eyes of the mayors whose boroughs have been affected, this change only spells further constraints. It does not offer anything any better.
Worse, Fernando Paulo Ferreira, suspects this is all part of the health minister’s ‘masterplan’ to “first make obstetric A&E departments (and pediatric A&E services) intermittent” and then justify their closure on the basis that they don’t perform a certain criteria of births.
“When things start to go wrong, the number of births also falls, and a set of radical measures begins to be justified on the basis of a situation that the ministry itself created,” he said. “This solution is unacceptable, and that is what we will make clear. I believe the minister has been given incorrect information by her own departments. She would do well to listen to the local councillors – to whom she did not listen when she decided to close these A&E departments.”
When asked what information he was referring to, he pointed out that this weekend “Beatriz Ângelo Hospital no longer had beds available for births, yet our A&E department was still operating…”
The minister would do better to “evaluate if the hospital to which she is moving all these people has, or has not, the conditions to take on the services of two A&E departments” . “I am certain that it hasn’t. Unfortunately, there has been news of births outside of hospitals. At this point where a large number of roads in some of these municipalities are still closed, or badly damaged due to the (recent) storms, it will be even more difficult for people to reach Loures.
“This decision has come at the worst possible moment. I truly do not believe the minister has properly evaluated the situation,” mayor Ferreira reiterated, stressing that these kind of decisions “of systematic degradation of the services of Hospital de Vila Franca de Xira have an ending that those in charge are not saying, but which they are doing everything to get there. This is inadmissible!”
It has to be said that the mayors and people affected by the other ‘novelty’ in A&E obstetric care (moving Barreiro’s services to Hospital Garcia de Orta in Lisbon) are equally outraged by the ministry of health’s decisions.
Source: Observador online
