Portugal’s Ordem dos Médicos (OM) doctors association is rolling up its sleeves for a head-on fight with the health ministry.
At issue are a number of ‘demands’ set out in a memorandum. If the demands are not met, the inference is that OM will sanction union intervention, including strike action.
OM’s leader José Manuel Silva presented his association’s memorandum on Friday.
Among lesser measures, it demands: the removal of “artificial barriers” that prevent patients accessing innovative therapies; and ‘equal pay’ for Portuguese doctors – who are currently paid half the salaries offered to incoming Cuban medics.
Other issues centre on the Code of Ethics and the OM’s reluctance to see doctors entering into negotiations over work contracts.
But the nuts and bolts of the memorandum centre on pay discrepancies.
The OM claims that the health ministry hires Cuban doctors with no speciality “to whom they pay double that which they pay to Portuguese clinicians”, writes Correio da Manhã newspaper.
The situation thus drives Portuguese doctors away from their own country, claims the OM.
As to the “artificial barriers” to state-of-the-art medication, the OM cites the situation for hepatitis C sufferers who are not given access to the best medication on the market.
OM asks all its professionals to denounce “situations of deficiency or insufficiency” in the state system that could put patients’ lives at risk.
