José Luís Carneiro wants answers to three questions “in next few days”
With radio stations hosting phone-ins on the crisis in emergency care for pregnant women; the lack of emergency medical helicopters at night, and the dearth of specialist doctors at the capital’s pediatric hospital, the new leader of PS Socialists has thrown down the gauntlet.
José Luís Carneiro wants answers from prime minister Luís Montenegro. He has not directed his questions at the health minister (Ana Paula Martins), nor at the ‘health directorate of the SNS’ (the administrative tier of the country’s state health service). He wants to hear from the top.
The questions are: “whether the government has an emergency plan for the management of hospital emergencies for the Lisbon Metropolitan Area, for Lisbon and Vale do Tejo” (the region buffeted by A&E rotations as departments close for days on end); why the Setúbal peninsula has so far had days and weeks without a decent response from the point of view of the response particularly to pediatrics, orthopedics and also obstetrics”, and finally what is going on regarding emergency medical air transportation?
As he stressed, it became clear this weekend that only one of four ‘air resources’ promised by the government to support hospital emergencies is operating during nighttime hours.
Carneiro then referred to the tragic stories that have emerged in recent days of mothers losing babies after a medical response he suggested was not “dignified”.
And so ‘we wait’. José Luís Carneiro is not the ‘firebrand/ hot head’ that the country entertained in the form of his predecessor. He is generally seen as mild-mannered and approachable. He has also said he wants his tenure to see constructive dialogue with the AD government.
Meantime, Lusa carries a report to announce that IGAS (the general inspectorate of health activities) has concluded that a pregnant woman who lost her baby last year, “after being cared for at Cascais Hospital”, has no reason to believe she received less than adequate professional attention.
Says the announcement: “It was considered that the user had adequate multidisciplinary follow-up to the provision of health care, and the relevant information was provided. From the information provided, it can be concluded that informed consent was obtained and there were no failures in communication procedures.”
This is an incident that goes back almost a year, when the pregnant woman was “sent home by the emergency doctor at Cascais Hospital after losing blood”, presumably on the understanding that everything with her unborn child was well.
The heavy bleeding occurred on August 16. Five days later she returned to the same hospital, “where it was confirmed that the baby was dead”
According to IGAS, it was possible to conclude that there was “no evidence of insufficiency or deficiency in the provision of health care to the user, nor of a lack or inadequacy of subsequent follow-up”. But the fact remains that the woman was sent home with a live foetus, and returned five days later to be told that it was not alive any longer.
Source material: LUSA/ TSF radio
