Three out of four regional heads of INEM ‘accumulate functions’, like Gandra d’Almeida
The truly dismal ‘scandal’ involving the former CEO of the nation’s health service executive, moonlighting for years at great personal benefit, is not, in the end, a practice uncommon within the public sector.
According to SIC today, three out of four regional heads of INEM (the institute of medical emergency for which Gandra d’Almeida was himself a regional head, before being promoted to CEO of the SNS executive) have also ‘accumulated functions’ (meaning worked more than one job within the system).
The practice is recurrent, but in these other cases – unlike the situation with the former CEO of the SNS – it is not considered illegal, as the regional managers ‘were not under the same duty of exclusivity’.
They are thus entitled to work within INEM, and then accumulate paid work in both the public and private sectors, explains SIC.
The thin dividing line is nonetheless adding to a public sense of exhaustion with all the issues regarding the SNS state health system.
Today, SIC carries a disconcerting clip of a woman speaking during a visit by health minister Ana Paula Martins to the opening of Catajal health unit (ULS São José) in Loures.
The woman explains she has no interest in discussing things with the minister, she simply wants to tell ‘her story’ – which refers to her husband, interned in Hospital Beatriz Ângelo on a ‘yellow’ protocol (urgent), for two and a half weeks, but not treated.
Her husband died, she said – because he did not receive the care he needed.
The woman described Hospital Beatriz Ângelo as “the hospital of death”.
To be fair, many people have similar experiences within in the SNS health system, and they will offer different names for their version of hospitals of death. But these ‘crises’ within state health are seemingly building to a crescendo now. Calls for the resignation of the health minister have peppered the last few weeks. Up to this point, prime minister Luís Montenegro has stressed that he has absolute confidence in his minister, and that the government is committed to improving the health service, and doing so transparently.
