O Portuguese Nurses Union announced in a statementthis Monday, the adherence to the general strike, one day after the National Federation of Doctors having unanimously approved, during a congress, a motion to join this strike.
The Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, stated, this Monday, that minimum services will be decreed in the SNS during the given the announced adherence of doctors and nurses.
“I heard on the news that you would one of the doctors and the other of nurses, joined the strike and we will naturally do what is also provided for in the law”, that is, “guarantee minimum services”, stated the minister.
Despite recognizing the impact of previous strikes, the minister said that “minimum services” have been ensured, praising the collaboration of health professionals.
“We managed to maintain minimum services and we managed to negotiate and people collaborate. Health professionals have a lot of civic awareness and we see this when we have a pandemic situation, a catastrophe, an accident [ou] a blackout, in the most disruptive things, when called upon health professionals never fail”, he highlighted.
Ana Paula Martins was speaking to journalists on the sidelines of a visit to the Hospital do Litoral Alentejano (HLA), in Santiago do Cacém, in the district of Setúbal.
However, according to the head of the health department, in a strike “of this magnitude”, the “Scheduled situations”, such as surgeries and consultations, “are affected”.
SEP and FNAM confirm adherence to the strike
Asked whether this strike could represent a sign that something is failing in the challenge of making this profession more attractive, Ana Paula Martins guaranteed that she is “working tirelessly with the unions” with whom the Government has agreements.
“At this moment we are practically in the final stages of work with the Senior Health Technicians, with the Senior Diagnostic and Therapeutic Technicians, with the Hospital Administrators and [a trabalhar no] collective agreement with nurses and also some improvements within the scope of the agreements we made with other professions”, he highlighted.
And he added that the Government will not “give up on continuing to dialogue with unions and professionals to respond to these challenges that are human resources”.
CGTP and UGT united in the general strike
A general strike was announced on November 8th by the general secretary of CGTPTiago Oliveira, at the end of the national march against the labor package, which led thousands of workers to walk down Avenida da Liberdade, in Lisbon, in protest against the changes proposed by the Government of Luís Montenegro.
On Thursday, the UGT unanimously approved the decision to move forward in convergence with the CGTP, thus including the favorable vote of the Social Democratic Workers (TSD).
Asked to comment on Eurostat data that reveals that Portugal is one of the European Union countries where it takes the longest to reach a hospital, the minister, who is undertaking a tour of Local Health Units across the country, to prepare the NHS for the winter period, alluded to the importance of “integration and coordination of care”.
“Health will not be compromised if there is what we saw here [no HLA] which is the integration and articulation of care, if we bring people closer to hospitals, when they need it, through proximity care”, or “via digital, team mobility and the articulation of care”, he considered.
