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The president of the Portuguese Association for Private Hospitalization (APHP), Óscar Gaspar, reiterated today the availability of private hospitals to respond to the covid-19 pandemic and other diseases, highlighting the “non-existent relationship” with the Government.
Óscar Gaspar addressed journalists at the Belém Palace, in Lisbon, after an audience with the President of the Republic, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who listens to the health sector in the face of the worsening pandemic in the country.
The APHP official said “to reiterate the availability” of private hospitals to “respond to the problems of covid-19” and the remaining “health needs”, arguing that “the Portuguese need a broader response”, involving the sector public and private. and that this “collaboration was effective.”
According to Óscar Gaspar, the plan presented by the General Health Directorate (DGS) for autumn-winter has “flaws”, since it gives “emphasis to the public sector.”
The president of the APHP pointed out that, in August and September, private hospitals, to which people “resort more”, managed to “respond” to non-covid-19 patients and “relieve the National Health Service”).
Óscar Gaspar lamented the “non-existent institutional relationship” between the guardianship and the private sector and that only at the end of last week there were “some contacts” from the regional health administrations of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo and the North to evaluate the capacity of response from private hospitals to the new phase of the covid-19 pandemic, which, in his opinion, required timely “planning and organization”.
The APHP leader also lamented that, after April, private hospitals were no longer involved in the response to the pandemic, and health officials deemed the NHS “self-sufficient.”
On Monday, Health Minister Marta Temido said that non-covid-19 patients who see appointments, tests or surgeries in the NHS are canceled due to the worsening of the pandemic will be sent to the private and social sector.
The covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than 1.1 million deaths and more than 43.5 million cases of infection worldwide, according to a report by the French news agency AFP.
In Portugal, 2,371 people died from 124,432 confirmed cases of infection, according to the most recent DGS bulletin.
Covid-19 is a respiratory disease caused by a new coronavirus (type of virus) detected in late December 2019 in Wuhan, a city in central China, which has spread rapidly across the world.
The disease was confirmed in Portugal on March 2.
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