Wednesday’s heavy rain in the Algarve highlighted a new ‘health service’ disgrace: leaks into rundown consulting rooms, to the extent that at least one doctor has appeared in national newspapers working with one hand on his computer and the other holding an umbrella over his head.
The doctor’s ‘patient’ was photographed in a thick jacket but with no overhead protection at all.
The sorry situation – coming in a week when the nurses association has revealed that patients in one hospital were left for two days without food or medication – highlights the parlous state of Portuguese State health care.
PSD MP Cristóvão Norte has said he will be taking up the issue “as a matter of urgency” with the government, while João Moura Reis, president of the Algarve’s ARS (the unfortunate abbreviation for the regional health association) has stressed that he has already sent people to “resolve the problem”.
National tabloid Correio da Manhã explains that the ‘consulting rooms’ are in fact containers, which were erected six years ago and only meant to be temporary.
ARS is said to be planning “new installations” for Loulé’s Lauroé health centre and the unit in Albufeira in 2017.
