It’s a new pilot-project and it started three weeks ago in a hospital in Ovar .
The ‘cuddly’ robotic baby seal is designed to help calm patients and lead them to using less tranquilizers and antidepressants.
Named Rosa, she may find herself ‘duplicated’ if results are positive.
Created with the use of “Japanese technology”, reports say Rosa costs €5000 and hasn’t actually ‘melted the heart’ of everyone who has come into contact with her.
She was on show yesterday at the “Portugal Health Summit” where minister of science and superior education Manuel Heitor joked that possibly every minister required a Rosa, just for themselves.
Health minister Adalberto Campos Ferreira is quoted as saying: “The minister of defence is the one who needs one, he has more problems than I do”.
Defence minister Azeredo Lopes had just had a particularly difficult day delivering his report on the munitions storage facility of Tancos in which he traced a military establishment with security failings going back three decades.
Tancos was the barracks from which “enough military hardware to start a small war” was mysteriously stolen last year, only to reappear, soaking wet in a nearby area of scrubland, four months later (click here).
natasha.donn@algarveresident.com
