In the lead-up to the legislative elections on May 18, healthcare has surfaced as a focal point of debate, with numerous criticisms and proposals centered around issues such as emergency room closures, waiting lists, the scarcity of family doctors, hospital conditions, and the management of the National Health Service (SNS).
Addressing these criticisms, Alberto Caldas Afonso, committee president, remarked, “People talk about what they don’t know.”
“I pity the lack of health literacy among politicians. Adequate, quality responses are being provided according to clinical situations,” stated the pediatrician.
Caldas Afonso explained that if everyone with an acute health issue floods a hospital emergency room, the capacity to respond effectively in terms of quality and time will be extremely limited, jeopardizing situations that require immediate attention.
He emphasized, “I worked for 10 years in one of the largest pediatric hospitals in Paris. In the pediatric emergency room, there were 10 or 12 children a day. Here, any hospital, no matter how small, has 100 to 150.”
However, he noted the success of the model implemented to remove non-urgent cases from emergency services, which involves calling the SNS 24 helpline (808242424). “There has been massive success.”
“Children are attended to promptly and with quality in urgent and semi-urgent situations, while non-urgent cases are addressed in appropriate settings, such as primary healthcare or open hospital consultations. The quality of care has clearly improved. People are no longer waiting 6, 7, 8, or 9 hours,” he highlighted.
Furthermore, any pregnant woman who calls SNS 24 receives “safe guidance on the most appropriate location for her situation,” thereby saving time.
During winter, amid peak respiratory infections, “the long queues of ambulances stopped in front of emergency services” have become a thing of the past.
“These are the facts that need to be stated, but no one does. People talk about healthcare as they would about football. Everyone is a sideline coach,” he stated, critiquing the lack of focus on “people’s protection.” Caldas Afonso, who heads the committee tasked with reorganizing gynecology/obstetrics and pediatrics emergencies, made these comments.
He criticized the “total frivolity” with which politicians, aspiring to be prime ministers, comment on measures taken to improve SNS’s response.
Caldas Afonso noted that Denmark is undergoing a similar reform to that of the SNS.
“It’s a model that makes perfect sense based on the current state of art. It’s striking, we criticize what we have, unaware that we are amongst the best in the world in maternal and child health,” he pointed out.
Although SNS’s response has “improved significantly,” Caldas Afonso acknowledged that “the challenges are substantial due to a lack of human resources.”
“If it were a nail-making factory, where increasing production capacity would simply result in more nails, everything would be fine. Unfortunately, it’s not. It takes 15 years to train an obstetrician or gynecologist to reach a basic level of quality,” he stressed.
Despite maximizing training efforts, the number of specialists retiring cannot currently be offset.
“Therefore, we need bold, substantive measures. But most importantly, we must offer pregnant women and newborns what has placed us among the top four to five health services worldwide. We cannot and must not lose this,” he insisted.
