Ten days. It is the maximum period that the Administrative and Tax Court of Funchal has given to the Regional Secretariat for Health and Civil Protection to publish the waiting lists in the sector.
The decision, signed by judge Mariana Colaço and dated March 29, follows the request of Élvio Sousa, regional deputy of the Juntos Pelo Povo (JPP), who required Miguel Albuquerque’s government to make publicly available the “lists of subscribers for surgery, by specialty and type of surgery, for additional diagnostic and therapeutic methods, and for specialist consultation, by specialty” by December 31, 2022. The aim is “to examine the problem of the realization of the right to health”. In the sentence – justified transversally by the Basic Health Act, it is also stated that the procedural costs will have to be borne by the Regional Health Secretariat (SRS).
Faced with the decision, DN contacted SRS to ask if it had already been notified, but the entity did not respond in time to close this edition.
With regard to opposition deputies (consisting of PS, JPP and PCP), the criticism is cross-cutting. On the side of the JPP, the applicant Élvio Sousa refers to the fact that “the use of the judicial procedure has been a feature” used by the party’s three deputies to “investigate the PSD/CDS regional government”, namely to obtain definitive data on the health waiting lists. Last year, these numbers, says Élvio Sousa, “came to demonstrate the existence of more than 118,000 references, including consultations, examinations and operations”. Something he describes as “a gigantic share, compared to the population living in the region, which has clearly experienced an increase of more than 80% in waiting lists compared to 2015” [ano em que Albuquerque chegou ao governo regional].
Moreover, he accuses, “reality concealment, practices of an opacity covered by a campaign orchestrated by government propaganda, the content of which often does not correspond to reality, have been very clear features of this coalition”. “The Madeirans are currently the only Portuguese who do not have these health protection rights,” he concludes.
Sérgio Gonçalves, representative of the PS, points out that “the health problems in the Autonomous Region of Madeira are the clearest example of the failure of the administration”. 2015,”when Miguel Albuquerque first took office as president of the regional government, he declared health his number one priority and assured Madeirans that he would solve the problem of waiting lists. At the end of his second term, it can be seen that his executives not only failed to find a solution to this problem, but they also allowed it to get significantly worse,” he criticizes.
in turn, the only deputy of the PCP in Madeira, Ricardo Lume, points out that it is necessary to defend the SRS more and better. So it is “unacceptable to continue transferring such significant resources from the regional budget to those who are turning the disease into a business and using that money to hire SRS professionals, jeopardizing its operation”. “For the PCP, the social rights of workers and all citizens are fundamental rights and an integral part of the advanced democracy it proposes to the people and the region,” he defends.
Source: DN
