In recent days, our media lives have been very focused on what is happening at the Ministry of Health, mainly on the statements of Ana Paula Martins, the governor responsible for one of the most difficult portfolios in a Government. The mission is not easy – neither for her nor for previous Health Ministers –, but there are some limits that cannot be exceeded.
One of them is making considerations without being completely convinced of what you are saying. Example? “They are pregnant women who do not have money to go to the private sector, pregnant women who sometimes do not even speak Portuguese and who were not prepared to call for help. Sometimes, they do not even have a cell phone” and “newly arrived in Portugal, with advanced pregnancies”. These two phrases were said in the Assembly of the Republic when Ana Paula Martins was confronted with the death of a patient at the Amadora-Sintra Hospital.
Prejudice aside – “they don’t have money to go to the private sector” or “they don’t even speak Portuguese” –, the government official’s statements are offensive to all those who still seek care in the National Health Service.
The minister’s mandate has been marked by some situations that in other governments were considered examples of bad choices: appointment of hospital administrators who end up creating problems for her – as happened now in Amadora-Sintra, when they did not give her all the information about the monitoring that the pregnant woman was receiving –; announcement of the opening of the obstetric emergency department at Hospital Garcia de Orta (Almada) 24 hours a day in September, which did not happen; creation of regional emergencies that will only appear next year; and a financial bonus for doctors, which has not yet been advanced. And this is so as not to dwell on the problems with INEM.
The panorama is not famous, on the contrary, and perhaps the minister will even be on a list of candidates to be remodeled in the coming months (at the will of Prime Minister Luís Montenegro or herself), but the truth is that there are many cases and a lot of pressure from professional classes and beyond.
As former Prime Minister and President of the Republic Cavaco Silva said yesterday, “in politics, mistakes made by a government cannot be hidden”. Perhaps this phrase was even a message. Who knows.
Executive editor of Diário de Notícias