Hospital problems in the Algarve
The Algarve health system has been a recent subject of very vocal discussion, with Western Algarve patients being forced to travel to Faro because of a recent merger between hospitals.
The controversial measure was meant to blend the region’s hospitals in order to create a ‘Central’ service which would make the Portimao Barlavento hospital nothing more than a health centre because all the specialist units are being sent to Faro.
This means that Portimao will be losing the vast majority of its specialist doctors and surgeons, because they will be going to Faro. Hence, Portimao runs the risk of becoming just an average health centre, capable of dealing only with non-serious cases.
What this means for patients from the western Algarve with serious health complications is that they will have no choice but to travel to Faro. For instance, if a serious accident would occur in Aljezur, the patient will have to travel more than 100 kilometres in order to get help, which could take over an hour. Suffice to say, many bad things can happen in the span of an hour when it comes to an injured person.
The services remaining in Portimao will be Paediatrics, General Surgery, Internal Medicine, Maternity and Orthopaedics, however, these will only be there for cases that don’t require surgery, because all the surgeons and specialists will leave. In practice this will mean the disappearance of the Portimao Hospital.
According to the merger documents the hospital will lose its daily psychiatry, gastroenterology, ear, nose and throat and ophthalmology services.
On the other hand, Pedro Nunes – the chief administrator of the Central unit and designer of the overhaul – has guaranteed that this reorganization will be for the benefit of the population and that as of December the hospital will have ‘a proper ER department’.
