Strike by doctors and nurses brings further chaos to beleaguered SNS health system
With the start of a two-day strike by doctors and nurses postponing thousands of consultations and interventions, the leader of FNAM – Portugal’s national doctors’ federation – has continued her relentless criticism of health minister Ana Paula Martins, calling for her substitution by “a minister who understands health and can serve the SNS”.
Joana Bordalo e Sá was speaking to journalists in Porto, conceding that her syndicate’s actions, on the same day as nurses, stand as “a huge disruption to patients’ lives. However, the only person responsible here is the minister of health, Ana Paula Martins, who has done nothing to prevent this situation,” she said.
In Bordalo e Sá’s opinion, “the only thing that this Ministry of Health has unilaterally planned for doctors in the public service has had disastrous consequences, by changing rules for recruitment tenders. As a result, the overwhelming majority of specialists who finished their speciality in March, half a year ago, have yet to be placed, at a time when there is a shortage of doctors…”
Bordalo e Sá also criticised the payment of overtime work, “the rules have been changed unilaterally and there are a lot of irregularities”.
And then there is the “latest abusive measure by the ministry, which represents an assault on our holidays that had been scheduled since April, in agreement with the service directorates, with the administrations themselves, and which are in danger of being cancelled”. (She is referring here to the government directive to ensure holidays are not taken to compromise the performance of departments).
“When there’s a shortage of doctors on the roster and in the accident and emergency department, it is not because the doctors are on holiday, it is because there’s a shortage of doctors – and this Ministry of Ana Paula Martins has done nothing to guarantee them and that is why we also never tire of repeating that we demand a minister who understands health and who can serve the national health service,” Bordalo e Sá continued, railing also against the fact that “no good agreement has been reached with doctors to date, either with the last government or with this one.”
Repeating all FNAM’s demands, Bordalo e Sá vowed that “if nothing happens, we will escalate our fight; the whole health sector will have to unite” (meaning, there would be more strikes by multiple unions on the same day).
“We have a range of solutions here, but the ministry of health and Ana Paula Martins maintain this stubborn attitude of not listening to the professionals, not listening to the doctors and not embracing at least some of their solutions,” she said.
In addition to this two-day strike, a national demonstration will be held from 3.30pm in front of the Ministry of Health in Lisbon today, to which the FNAM invites all professionals and patients as it considers that this is not just a question of fighting to improve doctors‘ working conditions, “it’s a fight for the national health service, which the national doctors” federation defends as being public, accessible, universal, of quality and which has to reach everyone”.
Sadly, however, none of that was happening today. Thousands of people have been caught by this two-day strike, reports SIC Notícias – people who got up early, took time off work, especially to make a consultation they had waited months for, if not years, discovered no-one was there to receive them.
Portugal’s SNS health service was neither public, accessible, universal, of quality or reaching everyone today, and it won’t be tomorrow, either.
Source material: LUSA
