In an interview with RTP3, Luís Pinheiro rejected any contact from the Presidency of the Republic with the clinical management.
“I have not had any contact with the President of the Republic on any issue and certainly not on this one,” stated the clinical director of the Hospital de Santa Maria when the two babies were being treated (between late 2019 and early 2019). 2020), adding that he also does not know Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa’s son.
The case of the two twins living in Brazil who have now acquired Portuguese nationality and came to Portugal in 2020 to receive the drug Zolgensma for spinal muscular atrophy, for a total amount of four million euros, was published by TVI in November.
After the report was released, the President of the Republic said that he had been contacted by his son, who lived in Brazil, and forwarded the case to the services of the Presidency, who contacted the hospital in Santa Maria (Lisbon), where that drug was administered.
“If I had had that contact”, there would not have been “any consequences”, because decision makers “make clinical decisions based on the clinical situation of the patient”, Luís Pinheiro reiterated during the interview, as he “was unthinkable” that medical options “are not those that arise from the physician’s observation.”
“There were no orders, and even if there were, they would be absolutely unthinkable and not part of the clinical decision-making process,” the doctor said.
The final report of the audit requested by the Centro Hospitalar Universitário Lisboa Norte (CHULN), to which Lusa had access today, indicates that the two girls were referred (request for consultation) by the State Department of Health, an area under supervision by António Sales and Jamila Wood.
Responding to the report, the conclusions of which were released today, the former clinical director said that “the guardianship has not scheduled any appointments”, he “signaled a clinical situation for observation”.
“Regardless of his origins, there is no way I could negatively discriminate against a baby” who needed observation, he said.
Faced with criticism from other doctors about the cost of the drug and the fact that it was administered to these children, Luís Pinheiro said he had a “clear conscience” and denied the existence of a waiting list for that treatment.
“There was no priority criterion other than necessity,” the doctor stated, emphasizing that “there are no children waiting for this drug” and that the twins were “not ahead of any child.”
The doctor emphasized that hospital services were contacted by other parents who had children with the same pathology, but on that occasion the only case willing to be subjected to treatment with the experimental drug was those twins.
“We do not leave any child with this pathology untreated,” he stated.
Source: DN
