Covid 19 stretching health services.
The regional secretary of Health and Civil Protection said today that waiting four hours in an ambulance is nothing, if we take into account the levels of security that are necessary to impose.
Pedro Ramos reacted, therefore, to the criticism made by some commanders of fire brigades who say they wait a long time with the patients inside the ambulance, outside the hospital’s emergency room.
The regional secretary, who visited the Calheta Health Center today, stressed that Madeira is going through a phase of covid-19 where, in fact, the severity of the disease is less, but the transmissibility is increasing. The new variants, as he explained, are of great transmissibility and, therefore, there are people who need to wait for a vacancy. “If we wait four hours for greater safety of users and health professionals, the wait is not long”, he said, giving the example of places where people die, for example, due to the lack of certain professionals. The secretary was clearly referring to what happened recently, in Caldas da Rainha, on the mainland, in which a baby died for lack of obstetricians. Regarding the high number of covid-19, cases and deaths in recent days, Pedro Ramos says that the more people infected, the more pressure on health services.
Regarding the visit to the Calheta ‘hospital’, Pedro Ramos highlighted that 16 long-term inpatient beds had started in Calheta, with 28 more professionals working there. There are more than 100 professionals in total.