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The president of the Order of Doctors said today that Portugal faces “a hurricane” and it will be “extraordinarily difficult” to fight it “only with the National Health Service”, referring to the fight against the pandemic.
“We are facing a hurricane, of greater or lesser intensity, and how can we combat this hurricane only with the National Health Service? It is extraordinarily difficult, “said Miguel Guimarães at the online conference” Health interrupted: the impact of the pandemic on patients without Covid-19.
Although the SNS is responsive and “a beautiful public service, especially compared to other European countries, it has limitations.”
“I already had limitations before the pandemic, now they have become more pronounced,” he said, exemplifying: “I have a blanket that cannot cover me completely, if I put the blanket on my feet, I uncover my head, I put the head, uncover the feet ”.
“It happened in the first phase of the pandemic, that is, trying to cover our heads and respond to the pandemic, respond to Covid-19, we discovered non-Covid patients,” he said.
This fall / winter – defended – “We cannot (…) afford to discover, again, the non-Covid disease, the national authority must be aware of this” and will have to have “a strategic plan a little different from the one it presented.”
“It may even be what you presented, but you will have to objectively implement the ideas,” he said, considering that there are “good ideas” in the Autumn Winter Health Plan of the Directorate General of Health, but that “some important things are missing.”
The ideas that are in the plan are not materialized “nor is it shown how they will be done” to respond to “three storms”, the first being “and the most important” non-Covid patients.
“Just think of the various studies that have been conducted” on mortality and “damage” to planning and organization that has been carried out to combat the pandemic and that “is having completely devastating effects” on non-Covid patients.
For now, it is known that “mortality has clearly increased “, compared to previous years, but in the morbid “the situation will be much more complex, much more difficult to assess”, because it implies “going a little more in what is happening,” he warned.
“But surely there are many diabetic patients, with heart failure, with hypertension who have had a negative evolution, many cancer patients who ended up without being diagnosed in time,” he said.
Another “storm or challenge” is the fight against Covid-19, whose cases are on the rise and, consequently, the number of patients hospitalized in nursing and intensive care.
Finally, there is the issue of seasonal flu that “will also have an impact.”
“If we want to give a comprehensive response to these three challenges, we will need the support of the social sector and the private sector, there is no alternative,” he defended.
For the president, it is not possible at this time to strengthen the response capacity of the SNS to “respond to everything at once.”
He also highlighted that the Ministry of Health still has the challenge of “relieving family doctors” to do “their main mission” and hiring “specific equipment for this activity, that is, the monitoring of Covid patients that do not need to be hospitalized ”.
The Covid-19 pandemic has already claimed more than a million deaths worldwide since December last year, including 1,963 in Portugal.
