​​Montenegro holds Health Minister: “This isn’t going to go there with moves”

Three dead in 24 hours, waiting for INEM. “It’s my responsibility.” “This parliament must be unique in the world.”

In about 24 hours, at least three people died in Portugal waiting for help from the INEM, that didn’t arrive in time.

After the incident, on Tuesday, of a man in Seixal who waited 3 hours, a woman in Sesimbra and a man in Tavira also on Wednesday in a similar context.

Complaints about the functioning of Health accumulate, just as complaints accumulate requests for minister Ana Paula Martins to leave – including by .

Luís Montenegro does not give in: the Minister of Health will remain in office, to resolve the problems: “He is in the Government and will continue in the Government”.

The prime minister responded, upon returning from the fortnightly debates, to questions from deputies, in this case at the insistence of Pedro Pinto (Chega).

“In a context in which we are solving structural health problems, in which we are reinforcing available resources, in a context in which we are actually making gains in terms of system efficiency, in which despite the difficulties we have a system that responds more quickly, health problems cannot be resolved with dismissals or political or party-political moves“, justified Montenegro.

“It’s my responsibility”

Luís Montenegro admitted that the political responsibility for the health situation lies primarily with him, in response to Rui Tavares, from Livre, who argued that the Health Minister only remains because she is a “lightning rod” for the Prime Minister.

“Political responsibility: the first is minefor sure. The political responsibility for administration lies with the Government. It’s mine, it belongs to the members I choose to be in the Government, to each one who has tasks in the administration and who collaborate in terms of providing services”, stated the Prime Minister, during the fortnightly debate in the Assembly of the Republic.

Luís Montenegro said he did not understand the purpose of Rui Tavares’ question, who questioned the executive leader asking him who was politically responsible for protocols not having been activated and dozens of ambulances being stopped due to a lack of stretchers.

“Is it giving me the responsibility? I’m here to take on the responsibility.” full responsibility. Always, all. Me and any member of the Government”, he reinforced.

“The objective is really that, for her to assume political responsibility. The Minister of Health only remains because she is the biggest possible lightning rod for the Prime Minister, since she no longer solves anything”, countered the Livre spokesperson, after Montenegro had guaranteed that Ana Paula Martins will continue in the Government.

Rui Tavares also said he wanted to take the prime minister out of “his state of denial”.

“This must be the only parliament […] in which the international situation is not talked about, because its governance can be even more chaotic”, defended the deputy from Livre, who had begun his intervention lamenting the deaths of three people this week after they called INEM to ask for help and the resources did not arrive in time.

Aries Questions

The PS secretary general accused the Government of “insensitivity, incapacity and incompetence” in responding to health problems, considering that INEM has become “a lottery that plays with people’s health”.

“O INEM is one of the last strongholds of State security and today cannot secure a response and has turned into a lottery that plays with people’s health”, said José Luís Carneiro, in the same debate.

Carneiro said that Luís Montenegro’s governance has been characterized, in the health area, by a “profound incompetence, insensitivity and inability” to respond to needs.

“O PS never claimed there were simple solutionsOn the contrary, we always said that they were difficult and complex”, stated Carneiro, maintaining that the person who said the opposite was the prime minister.

The PS leader reported on the emergency rooms that are “clogged when they are not closed”, the “records of births in ambulances”, the increase in waiting lists for surgeries, the lack of family doctors and the “dramatic failures in the pre-hospital emergency”.

“We learned yesterday that the Government did not activate the ambulance reinforcement plan with the Firefighters League”, said José Luís Carneiro, questioning Luís Montenegro about the PS proposal for hospital emergency.

In response, Luís Montenegro accused José Luís Carneiro of having a “studied rhetoric wanting to impute insensitivity to the Government”.

“To answer you, just one word is enough: shamelessness”, said Montenegro, stressing that “health is the way it is also due to socialist governance”.

“Let the deputy assume that the problems we have began with the entry into office of this Government, ignoring the situation in which you left the SNS and the service’s ability to respond, imposes shamelessness that it would be good, for the depth of the debate, that the deputy did not have”, he said, adding that the difference between the PSD and PS is that, for the PSD, people come first, “the ideology to follow”.

Montenegro said that “there is several changes to be implemented” at INEM and that the response capacity in the health area is “much better today than it was a year ago and much better than it was two years ago”.