A new public-private partnership hospital, to be known as Hospital do Oeste (Hospital of the West) is to be constructed at Quinta do Falcão, in Bombarral, within an estimated time scale of five years. This is the gist of an announcement today by health minister Manuel Pizarro, who stresses there is “no doubt whatsoever that the population of the west deserves a much more differentiated and much larger hospital”. The only niggling detail is the term “estimated time scale”: Portugal and planned hospitals have quite a history with that terminology, without results. In the Algarve, for instance, the Algarve Central Hospital has been promised since 2008, and absolutely nothing has moved forwards, beyond the usual words.
