Health minister Manuel Pizarro is reportedly ‘in silence’ following the outcry over the death of an elderly patient, left on a stretcher in a hospital corridor as authorities could not agree on how he should have been transported to another hospital for treatment. The daughter of the man who died after six hours of being left in limbo claims she was actually told he was undergoing tests when he was already dead. She says she will be filing a complaint about the chaotic form in which her father was not attended. Firefighters too have criticised the lack of organisation which meant they were unable to transport the patient, even though they offered to… Readers may recall the country was assured matters within the State health service would improve following the creation of a second tier of management, the executive direction of the SNS. This does not appear to have been the case. The sector has been lurching from crisis to crisis, and today Portugal has its first ever strike by medical interns.
