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The director of Egas Moniz’s neuroradiology service, Gabriel Branco, founder of the Doctors for Truth movement and undoubtedly against the widespread use of masks as a way to combat the covid-19 pandemic, will have approved at least 13 statements in order to to exempt multiple patients. Wearing a mask, the Observer advances. The Egas Moniz Hospital, where this doctor works and where he will have issued the statements, only defends that “medical acts” are “the sole responsibility of the doctor who practices them” and that Gabriel Branco complies with the regulations of the General Directorate of Health (DGS ). ). The Order of Physicians admits that it will analyze this information internally.
According to the Observer, medical statements issued by the clinician exempt at least 13 patients, some of them minors, from wearing a mask. The justifications presented by the doctor range from constant headaches, shortness of breath, rhinitis, sinusitis to anxiety, even if some of them do not directly refer to problems that can be treated by their specialty, entering the domains of psychology or psychiatry or pneumology. The newspaper also highlights that many of these statements were made at the request of the patients themselves. Many of them had their first date and discharge the same day or the next day, without Gabriel Branco following them from that moment on.
Contacted by the PUBLIC to confirm the existence of these documents, Gabriel Branco was not interested in making statements because he was under “great pressure”.
On the part of the Board of Directors of the hospital where Gabriel Branco works, it is neither confirmed nor denied that the doctor passed these statements. It is only admitted that “medical acts, between a doctor and his patients, are the sole responsibility of the doctor who performs them.”
In the same statement, the Board of Directors states that the doctor in question “complies with the regulations of the DGS and the Board of Directors of the Centro Hospitalar Board of Directors.”
“The opinions of health professionals, as citizens, are the sole responsibility of themselves,” the document adds.
The Ordem dos Médicos states that “the information that is made public will be analyzed internally” and admits that it has not received complaints on this specific issue, of which the Observer was aware.
Questioned by the PUBLIC about the rules for statements of this type (that is, which doctors can transmit them), an official source from the DGS stated that it is not up to this body to “give an opinion on the matter in question,” being other bodies capable of inspect the “Health Activities”.
The doctor has already been the subject of a disciplinary process
Gabriel Branco had already been the target of complaints received by the Office of the Presidency of the Order of Physicians, which “were referred to the respective Regional Disciplinary Councils,” explains the Order. “We do not know and cannot anticipate the sentences that may result from the process, given the separation between the executive and disciplinary powers, as in the courts,” he emphasizes.
The Order adds that it has given a “public note” of concern “about the growth of groups called deniers and that represent a threat to the pandemic, by spreading erroneous information and that can contribute to the non-adherence of citizens to essential measures such as I use a mask, hand hygiene and physical / social distance ”, as is the case of the Doctors for Truth movement.
The PUBLIC also tried to contact the Ministry of Health, to find out if they had already had knowledge of this situation, but at the time of publication of this news, they had still not had a response.
According to the law that imposes the mandatory use of a mask in public spaces, currently in force, the use of a mask is not mandatory in the presence of a multiple disability certificate or medical statement that demonstrates that the clinical condition or cognitive impairment does not allow the use of More expensive.
Gabriel Branco is one of the seven doctors targeted by a disciplinary process by the Doctors for Truth movement, a group that devalues the severity of the disease caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The group, founded in August, opposes the widespread use of masks and diagnostic tests using the PCR technique.
Gabriel Branco was mentioned in at least two of the complaints submitted to the Ordem dos Médicos, which led to disciplinary proceedings, according to the PUBLIC at the end of October.
