A balance released this Friday (14) by the Ministry of Health shows that there were 288 beds blocked, that is, out of use, in federal hospitals in Rio de Janeiro in the first week of April. According to the director of the Department of Hospital Management in the State of Rio, Alexandre Telles, the ministry is carrying out work to reopen these beds. 
According to data from the Ministry of Health, in January of this year, there were 593 beds blocked in federal units. That is, in three months, 305 beds were reopened, which represents a 51% reduction in closed beds.
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“The main reasons for closing beds are human resources, structural problems and the need to purchase furniture. We are already having concrete actions from the ministry for us to solve (the problem). Proof of this is the reduction of prevented beds”, said Telles.
According to him, not only have the beds been reopened, but they are actually being used by patients. The balance of the Ministry of Health shows that the number of occupied beds increased from 843 in January to 1,205 in April.
“It means, in other words, that we opened a medium hospital in Rio de Janeiro, from January to now”, said the secretary of Specialized Health Care at the ministry, Helvécio Magalhães Junior.
In February, the Ministry of Health carried out a series of technical inspections in the six general hospitals administered by the Union, the federal hospitals of Andaraí, Cardoso Fontes, Bonsucesso, Ipanema, Lagoa and State Servers.
In these inspections, not only the large number of closed beds were observed, but also the closure of 20 operating rooms, ICU beds and entire sectors (pediatric emergency and coronary care unit in Andaraí, coronary care unit and semi-intensive care unit in Lagoa and neurosurgery of , to name a few).
Serious infrastructure problems were also found in these hospitals, since they are old buildings and have not maintained an acceptable standard of conservation.
The Ministry of Health created a working group to draw up an emergency plan to resolve the problems identified in these surveys. In addition, he informed that he has adopted some measures such as the elaboration of the plan to recompose his workforce, which lost 1,600 employees of its permanent staff in the six hospitals since 2018, the dialogue with the health authorities of the state and municipality and the monitoring the surgical queue and hospital occupancy.
The data were informed during the inauguration ceremony of the new directors of the federal units of Rio de Janeiro, with the presence of the Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade.
“National institutes and federal hospitals are not a problem. They have to be seen as part of the collective solution to health issues”, said the minister.
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