The coordinator of the Left Bloc accused the Government this Thursday of “sadistic management” of the National Health Service (SNS) and of taking decisions that tie it to a relationship with the private sector “of predation and cannibalism”.
“The Government has a sadistic management of the NHS. We have a Government, a minister [da Saúde] which does not give hospitals the conditions to be able to function”, said Mariana Mortágua at the end of a meeting in Porto with the National Federation of Doctors (FNAM), which called a strike for 24 and 25 September.
The Bloco coordinator considered that, when things go wrong, the PSD Government “purges” hospital administrations “as happened” with the board of directors of the Almada-Seixal Local Health Unit (ULSAS), which includes the Garcia de Orta hospital.
Mariana Mortágua was referring to the fact that, on Wednesday, the executive board of the National Health Service dismissed the board of directors of ULSAS, chaired by Maria Teresa Luciano, and appointed the socialist Jorge Seguro Sanches to the position.
To understand what happened, the BE will call the former ULSAS administration to the Assembly of the Republic, he revealed, adding that those responsible for the SNS often do not have “the eggs to make the omelette they have to make”.
“The second element of this sadistic management of the NHS is a Government that does not negotiate with doctors and does not want to increase salaries, but then takes the money that would be available to make these negotiations and gives it to private health centers,” he explained.
The Bloco member alluded to the Government’s decision to create Family Health Units managed by the social and private sectors, which she classified as “very negative”, claiming that they bring “enormous risks to people’s health, to health centers and to the NHS”.
Speaking of a “wrong model for the country”, Mariana Mortágua considered that the Government is taking a series of decisions in health that could, in a very definitive way, “tie the NHS to a relationship with the private sector of predation and cannibalism”.
