The former Secretary of State for Health, António Lacerda Sales, assured on Wednesday in an interview with Antena 1 that he had not scheduled any appointment at the National Health Service (SNS) for the Portuguese-Brazilian twins with spinal muscular atrophy and added that he was not yet informed are a request from the Ministry of Health to Santa Maria Hospital.
“I haven’t made an appointment on the NHS and that’s why I’m absolutely calm. As I said, they started by saying I’d made an appointment and then they realized I hadn’t made an appointment. Then, there would be an e email coming, but it has not yet appeared “No email, I have requested this document several times and no email appears. So now a phone call appears, I would like to have documents that confirm and prove this, because if we do not continue in the area of assumptions and uncertainty”said Lacerda Sales.
“I didn’t know anyone who had done this, of course not,” assured the former Foreign Minister.
According to the report of the internal audit of the Santa Maria Hospital, at the request of the board of directors of Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Norte (CHULN), the first consultation of the twins was requested by the Ministry of Health.
Ana Paula Martins, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Centro Hospitalar Lisboa Norte (CHULN), told the Parliamentary Health Committee that internal controls for admission, treatment and monitoring of treatments for children with spinal muscular atrophy between 2019 and 2023 were exceptionally respected. of the “referral of two patients for the first neuropediatric consultation”.
Regarding the “alleged favoritism of two twin babies, suffering from Spinal Muscular Atrophy, in access to treatment with the drug Zolgensma,” the exception concerns two patients referred by the State Department of Health to the Department of Pediatrics, “according to clinical records. “, with a telephone appointment.
It is recalled that António Lacerda Sales is the subject of an investigation opened by the Medical Association into the case of Portuguese-Brazilian twins treated in Portugal. However, the former Secretary of State for Health deemed “not qualifyable” what he considers “interference” by an order in the activity of a sovereign body.
Source: DN
