Monday morning saw two hunger-strike protests hit Faro Hospital, as news services and national TV had a field day.
At the entrance to the hospital, psychiatrist Dr Pedro Larisma began his strike over €8,000 in back pay he claims he is still owed since 2012, and in the administrative block, cancer patient Maria João Reis Deus was preparing to strike over delays in life-saving medication.
But both protests have been ‘answered’ by hospital boss Dr Pedro Nunes. Indeed, Maria João’s protest was pretty much stopped in its tracks, as the medicines she claimed were out of stock had been replenished before the weekend.
Nonetheless, the brave breast cancer patient insisted on getting a ‘guarantee’ that delays would not jeopardise people’s ongoing treatment.
“I feel much better now,” she told the Resident at lunchtime today. “I got the assurances I need and I don’t need to strike now.”
Diagnosed with breast cancer in 2012, Maria João told us she had twice turned up at Faro Hospital for vital Letrozol hormone blockers only to be told there were next to none available.
“Last week, when I wanted 30 tablets for a month, the pharmacist told me he only had two,” explained the former photojournalist. “He told me I would have to come back the next day, but when I did, the medication still hadn’t arrived.”
It arrived much later, after Maria João had already returned home to Lagoa.
“It is outrageous that patients should be left waiting for medication like this. It adds to the stress that they are already under and can seriously harm states of mind,” she stressed.
Currently unemployed, Maria João posted her story on Facebook over the weekend, and it was rapidly picked up by local and national media.
Talking to us some time ago, Pedro Nunes admitted: “Of course, with all the pressures we’re under from the government and demands of the Troika, there can be delays in medication getting through. But we’re only talking of a day or two – nothing significant.”
Of this specific case, he said that the medicine Maria João needs is one that involves a “complex process” to access when hospital stocks run low.
“As soon as the lack of it was noticed, it was ordered,” he assured us. “It arrived on Friday.
“We have had some problems with the IT systems linking the two (main) hospitals, but as soon as any lack (of medication) is detected, we fix the problem immediately.
“Right now, there is nothing lacking due to financial reasons, nor is there anyone who has gone without, or is going without medication.”
In the case of Dr Larisma, he is “prepared to go the distance”. The 47-year-old father-of-four was camped outside the hospital today, with a table and two chairs, reading the Economist’s “Pocket World in Figures” and a psychiatry textbook on the vagus nerve.
Dr Larisma, who only recently returned from overseas to live here, plans to sleep in his car at nights and has set aside 20 days for the protest.
In private practice these days, he told us he has had to defer a number of patients today and will go on doing so until he gets results.
“I have had cameras in my face all morning,” he told us. “But nothing from the authorities.
“Throughout the last two years where I have been battling to receive the €20,000 they originally owed me, their communication has always been abysmal. In the end, I felt this was the only way of getting through to them.”
Maintaining a sense of bathos, hospital director Pedro Nunes said, nevertheless, that hunger strikes were not the usual way of dealing with financial discrepancies.
“Dr Larisma has received everything that was registered in the hospital as hours worked,” he told us. “Last week we closed the books with his lawyer receiving €13,000. The director of service confirmed there was nothing else owing. Dr Larisma needs to present documents to prove his affirmations and he hasn’t done so. This hospital pays and has paid everything that it owes in accordance with the law. A hunger strike is not seen as a criterion for payment.”
By NATASHA DONN [email protected]
