Refuses to discuss possible departure
Fernando Araújo, the man at the helm of the Socialist’s ‘extra tier’ of State health Service management, is reported today to have expressed “little concern about the PSD’s criticism of the new local health units (ULS)”.
Lusa adds that he also “refused to talk about a possible departure from his post”.
But that is where things could be headed.
Last week, Jornal i reported that if the incoming government is to fulfill its programme, “the new government will have to reverse the bulk of the restructuring of the SNS” that has happened under Fernando Araújo’s checkered watch. “And if that happens, Fernando Araújo will leave”.
In the meantime, however, Fernando Araújo continues what Jornal i calls “his crusade”. It has not been a popular one on multiple levels – doctors particularly have balked at a number of his enforced changes; at his way of operating.
“If Ana Paula Martins, the former chairwoman of the board of directors of Santa Maria Hospital who resigned in December last year and was elected AD MP for Lisbon takes over” as minister of health, Jornal i believes Araújo will resign, and “Álvaro Santos Pereira, Passos Coelho’s former Economy Minister, is the name insistently mentioned to replace him in the post”.
But all this is thinking well into the future: the new government will still have major hurdles to clear before it can start making any changes, and this is what Araújo seems to be banking on.
“(I’m) not worried at all”, he told Lusa, about his thoughts for the immediate future. “We are working actively, consistently, the results are showing and, therefore, we are approaching this new phase of the political cycle in a very calm manner.
“More important than my continuity, or that of any other member of any SNS institution, is that we find answers to the problems,” he stressed, speaking after a meeting with the Portuguese Fire Brigades League and the National Institute for Medical Emergency (INEM) at the National Authority for Medicines and Health Products (Infarmed) in Lisbon.
As to whether he has already spoken to Prime Minister-designate, Luís Montenegro, Araújo responded that “it’s not the right time for that.
“We don’t even have a health minister, or a finance minister, or the government itself. So let’s wait for the government calmly,” he said.
Fernando Araújo announced a “major reform” of Portugal’s State health Service in September last year, putting the start date as of January 2024 with the creation of 31 ULS – which integrate hospitals and health centers into the same institution and management – in addition to the eight that already exist.
The measure has been criticised since the outset by the PSD, which has called for the ULS to be suspended, or at least for their leaders to be appointed on a replacement basis.
Miguel Pinto Luz, now one of the PSD MPs representing the Algarve, said pre- the March 10 elections that the Socialist government was more concerned with “creating new public entities” and filling the SNS with cronies than actually doing anything that would improve situations. He particularly referred to the law establishing the creation of ULS’s, saying it would “complicate problems in a situation that is already very delicate”.
Portugal’s beleaguered SNS “does not need more entropy, more problems, more confusion (…) The frivolity of the ULS model hastily presented by the Socialist government seriously harms the health of the Portuguese, brings no response to patients and fails to motivate health teams,” he said.
Source material: Lusa/ Jornal i/ psd.pt
