The hearing for General João Cartaxo Alves is scheduled for 16:00 behind closed doors, while the hearing for the Minister of National Defense, Nuno Melo, will be open to the media at 18:30.
The hearings are the result of two requests submitted by Chega and PS to urgently hear General João Cartaxo Alves regarding the Air Force’s support in emergency medical air transport with INEM.
The proposal to hear the Minister of National Defense, Nuno Melo, was put forward by centrist deputy João Almeida during last week’s parliamentary committee debate, after criticizing PS for filing a request with accusations against the CDS-PP president without hearing him.
Recently, the government resorted to the Air Force to ensure emergency transport, a temporary solution due to the company (Gulf Med) awarded the service not starting the operation on July 1 as planned in the contract signed with INEM.
This contract was awarded to Gulf Med for approximately 77.5 million euros for an operation involving four helicopters operating 24 hours a day until 2030.
Since the 10th, the Air Force has been providing four aircraft on a 24-hour basis for emergency medical transport: two helicopters (a Black Hawk and a Merlin EH-101) and two airplanes.
A constraint pointed out regarding this government solution is that the Air Force helicopters cannot land at hospital helipads due to their larger size compared to INEM’s helicopters.
Nuno Melo stated on the 9th that the problem lies not with the helicopters but with the “infrastructures that will eventually need to be adapted for emergency actions that may well be necessary.”
The Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, acknowledged that the government could have performed better in launching the international public tender, and the president of Gulf Med Aviation Services, Simon Camilleri, blamed the government and INEM for delays in the tender.
In the first 15 days of July, emergency medical air resources conducted 29 missions, five of which were carried out with the Portuguese Air Force’s (FAP) deployment, according to the National Institute of Medical Emergency (INEM).
