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Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
Saturday 6th July 2024.
There are no limits to the imagination, are there? I can just envisage the first major European tour operator cancelling all trips to Portugal this year, showing the government that the tourist industry acts responsibly and takes care of its customers – especially in the event of illness.
I no longer recommend travelling to Portugal, especially to the Algarve. This is because the government – no matter whether it is socialist or conservative – has run Portugal’s healthcare system into the ground, to such an extent that people no longer dare to become ill. If you are travelling to Portugal, under no circumstances should you fall sick. This may end very badly.
So, if you have problems with high blood pressure, use a pacemaker or simply suffer from gout (not to mention the fact that you can also get sick from eating old fish and even contract food poisoning in Portugal), you should never trust the attractive brochures on display at travel agencies, because the hospitals in Portimão and Faro are working at the very limit of their capacity. The misery that I – a journalist who has worked here for 34 years – have personally experienced in the last few months of this year can hardly be described in words.
A neighbour keels over in the heat of the day and then has problems with her balance and high blood pressure. She is picked up at home by INEM and an emergency paramedic after an hour, taken to the A+E in Portimão, has a yellow bracelet tied to her wrist and is placed in the corridor – together with 30 other emergency patients. After four hours, the first man in the queue topples off his chair and lies crumpled at her feet. It takes some time before a nurse can find the time to help the obviously very ill man up from the ground and place him on a stretcher… Another neighbour has an eye infection and is fobbed off with a green bracelet on his wrist and a box of Ibuprofen 400 mg and antibiotics. There was no ophthalmologist available at that moment…
I remember a colleague from Vila do Bispo who complained of chest pains when she went to the emergency services at Portimão hospital. She had suffered a heart attack and was immediately fobbed off with a handful of pills. The following night, she died peacefully in her own bed at home. A friend from Monchique was operated on for a hernia in Portimão and also died. Another close family acquaintance suffered a stroke. When he was admitted to hospital, he was put in a wheelchair and had to wait hours…
You could be forgiven for thinking that the hospitals in the Algarve are haunted by some sort of ghost, as if things were not going entirely according to plan. The fact is that there is a spectacular shortage of staff and a lack of funding from politicians. And this is the dilapidated system under which they work. Many nurses are not only working under time pressure; they are also operating in a tremendous state of fear.
The neurosurgery department at the hospital in Faro is under particular scrutiny: anyone who is about to undergo spinal surgery should always get a second opinion from an independent doctor before having the operation. It is quite possible that you can manage to drag yourself to hospital on your own two feet, be operated on the next day and then have to use a wheelchair to get around because you are paralysed.
The mess that is made in one hospital can then be repaired in the rehabilitation centre in São Bras de Alportel. The costs to the state of such a botched operation do not bear thinking about. Nine months in hospital, expensive physiotherapy, outpatient transport, disability pensions, etc. And the surgeon is allowed to continue perpetrating his mischief in the state healthcare system. Names should not be mentioned here.
Congratulations, Democracy in Portugal. You turned 50 this year. In medicine, however, you are still working in the Middle Ages, or rather, you resemble Professor Ega Moniz, who invented the lobotomy: the separation of the neural pathways between the thalamus and the frontal lobe without any sense or reason.
The Portuguese healthcare system is a long way from adequately serving people who fall ill or are ill; exceptions prove the rule. Therefore, I can only warn every visitor to Portugal not to fall ill here in this country. You are better off staying in Germany, England and France and ideally spending your holidays there until the governments in Portugal get to grips with the problems.
