[ad_1]
“Some hospitals are already in a disorganized situation, while others who think they are still in August and are committed to recovering waiting lists for surgeries and consultations,” said João Gouveia, in interview with the Public newspaper.
The president of the Portuguese Society of Intensive Care maintains that, given the pressure to which the health systems are subjected with the daily arrival of new cases for intensive care, it is necessary “to be able to buy time until the measures are effective.”
For this, it is “necessary to suspend the scheduled activity, stop the surgeries and mobilize the professionals”, warning that, “if they want to continue with the scheduled surgeries and consultations, seriously ill patients will die.”
“The effort must be common, the hospitals must provide support. There cannot be hospitals that cut 30% of scheduled surgeries when others have already cut 80% ”, he complains, also considering that the existing network in the National Health Service that allows the transfer of patients between hospitals based on their availability it may not be working because at the moment some are already at the maximum alert level and others are not ”.
“This means that there is an unbalanced effort and implies that some do not want to accept patients from another hospital because they think that the hospital has not yet done everything it could do,” he tells Público.
Faced with a borderline scenario, in which it is no longer possible to receive all patients in intensive care, João Gouveia admits that the “logic of the common good” applies. “There will be a reversal of the usual logic, we will have to move from the individual logic of giving everything for a patient to try to give everything to the largest possible number of patients,” says the president of the Portuguese Society of Intensive Care.
This interview is published after the Government announced yesterday the opening of more than 230 hospital beds to the North. The announcement was made by the Minister of Health, Marta Temido, in Vila Verde, district of Braga, during the act of signing agreements with 10 Santas Casa da Misericórdia, chaired by the Prime Minister, António Costa.
