Nurses warn of situations of rupture at State health centres

Continuing the dire warnings coming every day now from hospitals and health centres throughout the country, SEP – the syndicate of Portuguese nurses – has warned of imminent “situations of rupture and difficulties when it comes to responding” at State health centres. Nurses are “exhausted and tired”, SEP’s president José Carlos Martins explains, reaffirming the call across the medical profession for the government to start hiring new professionals in earnest. The constant alerts in the press have been accompanied by television pundit José Gomes Ferreira posing the question ‘how can the government justify spending €4 billion on TAP’ (which he describes as a “bottomless pit”) and ‘continue without  hiring (the necessary number of) doctors?’