At a press conference at the party’s national headquarters in Lisbon, BE coordinator Mariana Mortágua insisted that Prime Minister Luís Montenegro must dismiss Health Minister Ana Paula Martins and announced that the party has submitted a request to hear the minister in parliament to “explain everything that has happened in recent days.”
Despite this request, the Bloquista leader clarified that she does not expect an answer from the Health Minister, but rather from the Prime Minister, adding that Luís Montenegro “cannot continue to hide” and that “if he wants to govern, he must govern” and “present solutions to health problems.”
“He must take responsibility for what is happening in the SNS. It is not enough to make politics against immigrants and change the nationality law as if all the country’s problems were reduced to a single issue,” she added.
BE coordinator Mariana Mortágua stated that the country has witnessed “serious and grave events” in various areas of the SNS in recent days, particularly in the response provided by INEM.
The Bloco leader referenced the case of a patient with a cranial injury transported by an Air Force helicopter, a process that reportedly took more than five hours between Covilhã and Coimbra, and the case of a pregnant woman at 31 weeks, in a risky situation, who lost the baby on Thursday after being directed to a hospital more than an hour away from her residential area, according to RTP.
“While Parliament debated this proposed change [to the nationality law] of the Government, a woman lost a child on her way to an emergency, and she did so because she was ensnared in a system that the Government set up, because it has no solution for the problem of emergencies and the SNS in Portugal,” said the Bloquista leader.
The BE coordinator also criticized the replacement of INEM helicopters with those of the Air Force, emphasizing the recent reports of the inability to land these aircraft at the heliports of some hospitals, accusing the Government of not considering this limitation in the service contract.
Mortágua further noted that, in addition to these issues, the “hospital schedules for the summer are not ready,” and, therefore, “this summer could be much worse than these past months.”
Asked about the proposal presented by the PSD to remove from the law – originating from projects by the Bloquistas and PAN – the concept of obstetric violence, Mariana Mortágua deemed the intention “unacceptable” and a setback in the rights achieved, revealing that the Government “does not care about the country” and only aims to contribute to a “cultural war.”
Mariana Mortágua also noted that the party has submitted a question in parliament addressed to the Government about whether the possibility provided by law for women diagnosed with endometriosis to justify work absences is being fulfilled.
