In Almodôvar, after visiting the health center in the neighboring municipality of Castro Verde, both in the Beja district, the Secretary-General of PS, José Luís Carneiro, highlighted what he considered to be “yet another failure of the Government’s health policy.”
“This Government promised, in an action plan it presented, to address several issues in the National Health Service (SNS), particularly the most glaring, which is hospital emergencies,” he noted.
However, José Luís Carneiro pointed out that the country is witnessing, “for the second consecutive year, pregnant women traveling from place to place to give birth,” reaching “a third-world extreme” with a woman giving birth “in the street.”
“It is proof of a brutal failure in the health sector,” he emphasized.
According to the PS leader, the socialist delegation visiting the Castro Verde Health Center learned that this Alentejo municipality has “about a thousand people without a family doctor.”
During the stop in Almodôvar on the “For the Cohesion and Enhancement of the Territory” route along National Road 2 (EN2), the socialist leader took the opportunity to recall the PS proposals for the health sector, such as strengthening primary health care.
Carneiro advocated “a reinforcement of family health units as legislative instruments and work methods to meet the needs of those who still do not have a family doctor, due to their method of doctor substitution.”
“The more qualified the response in primary health care, the better the living conditions of our population, and the less demand there will be for hospital care,” he stressed.
The Secretary-General of PS also proposed more investment in home care and community health care teams to address the demand “upstream in the SNS.”
“It is necessary to consider the composition of the patient list for each family doctor to adjust that list to the diversity of territories, social diversity, and the diversity of pathologies, so that in some cases we can expand the patient list of the family doctor and, in other cases, possibly reduce it,” he noted.
The introduction of medical specialties in primary health care, such as ophthalmology, psychiatry, or dentistry, with scheduled consultations, was one of the proposals.
