Mario Cruz / Lusa
The Minister of Health, Manuel Pizarro, guaranteed today, in Porto, that no maternity hospital in Portugal will be closed, not even maternity hospitals in a difficult situation, as is the case in some in the interior of the country with “a shortage of professionals”.
“We are not going to close any maternity hospital. We have a situation that I don’t hide and that is very difficult. It involves some maternity hospitals, namely in the interior of the country, with a great shortage of professionals”, he declared. Manuel Pizarro to journalists.
“But these are really areas where we have to do everything in our power to keep the maternity wards in operation, because people may be less numerous, but they are Portuguese like the othersare entitled to the SNS and are places where the distance to travel is greater”, added the Minister of Health.
On the sidelines of the ceremony to mark World Cancer Day, which took place in Porto this morning, at the Northern Regional Center of the Portuguese League Against Cancer, Manuel Pizarro recalled that closing maternity hospitals would have two effects.
“In some cases would leave the mothers too far from the nearest maternity hospital. That would be a problem. In another case, this would lead to closurethat of maternity hospitals where training of young specialists is being carried out. Well, this is exactly the opposite of what we want”, he said, reinforcing the idea that Portugal needs more specialists in obstetrics and gynecology.
Asked what would be the right model to combat the fact that maternity hospitals are in a rotation systemManuel Pizarro considers that this solution has proven to work well.
“I think that the solution that we found frankly has proven to work well, that is, we have guaranteed quality and safety to mothers and children who are born and we have guaranteed predictability and peace of mind to populations since we adopted this model of alternating operation, programmed with predictability” .
“The turnover model is being worked on by the executive management of the SNS and that’s what we should do. We took measures, we followed their implementation and then we tried to assess what happened ”, he explained.
“The first assessment was made in relation to the two weekends of Christmas and New Year, which are always the most difficult from a human resources point of view, where things went very well. 849 children were born in the SNS maternity wards in total safety and tranquility”, declared Manuel Pizarro.
The minister reiterates that the model will continue with “adaptations” in the first quarter of 2023 and that, in the end, the necessary assessments will be carried out
According to Manuel Pizarro, if there is something to fix, it will fix itself. “If there are conditions to improve, we improve. The executive management of the SNS is doing this work, I think with great competence”, he concludes.
On the sidelines of the World Cancer Day ceremony, the Minister of Health considered that breast cancer screening is “frankly fine”but admits that cervical cancer has not yet recovered from the pandemic and colorectal cancer is disparate.
