Manuel de Almeida / LUSA
The Prime Minister, Luis Montenegro, accompanied by the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins
The Executive purchased 37 fewer vehicles than predicted by António Costa’s Government. The tender for the acquisition arrived a year late, for financial reasons.
In November 2023, the Government of Antonio Costa approved the acquisition of 312 vehicles for INEMwith the delivery of the first ambulances scheduled for 2024.
However, according to , the executive of Luis Montenegro rescheduled the decision of the PS executive, postponing the purchase of vehicles until 2025 and acquiring only 275 cars.
O contest public to purchase INEM vehicles was released only in early July 2025.
As the morning man says, the postponement will have been due to financial reasons.
In August 2024, the Government of Montenegro reprogrammed António Costa’s decision, establishing that the financial charges for the acquisition of INEM vehicles would be postponed by one year to 2025, 2026 and 2027when the previous executive had established that the expense for purchasing the vehicles would be made in 2024, 2025 and 2026.
The Ministry of Health did not clarify to the CM why the public tender for the acquisition of INEM vehicles was only launched in July 2025, nor when the Government estimates that the first ambulances will be delivered to INEM.
Government promises rapid creation of 400 beds
The Minister of the Presidency admitted that the creation of 400 inpatient places in new intermediate units, contracted with entities in the social and solidarity sector, will be quick, although no concrete dates are given.
“They are a transitional solution (…) it is a matter of days, weeks, for these situations to be put into effect”, he said António Leitão Amaro at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, in Lisbon.
The Government plans to create 400 social inpatient places in new intermediate units, contracted with entities in the social and solidarity sector, aimed at people with clinical discharge who cannot yet be referred to permanent continued care responses.
According to minister António Leitão Amaro, the release of hospital beds should improve INEM’s performancewhich faces constraints due to the saturation of emergency services.
“It is very important, because it allows freeing up beds within hospitals (…) with a very significant improvement in INEM’s service capacity”, he highlighted.
Leitão Amaro stated that the difficulty in getting ambulances into hospitals is directly linked to the “strangulation of stretchers and beds”, a problem that results from “several situations” and which worsened with the peak of the flu outbreak.
