A pregnant woman is turned away at the hospital gate and dies. The tragic case led to the resignation of the Minister of Health, who had actually promised to reform the health system. The structural problems run deep.
A doctor in the intensive care unit of the Santa Maria Hospital in Lisbon during the corona pandemic, which was particularly bad in Portugal.
Portugal’s Minister of Health, Marta Temido, announced her resignation in tears this week. This decision was triggered by the death of a heavily pregnant Indian woman who was turned away from a Lisbon hospital because of a lack of beds and suffered cardiac arrest while being transported to another hospital.
The 48-year-old socialist Temido cut such a good figure during the Covid pandemic that she has even been traded as a possible successor to Prime Minister António Costa since last year. But the chaos and the sometimes catastrophic conditions in the Portuguese health system have now put an end to her career prematurely.
Complaints about the lack of staff in hospitals in Portugal have been increasing since the beginning of the summer. Emergency rooms, obstetrics departments and internal medicine were particularly affected. According to Miguel Guimarães, president of the Portuguese Medical Association, Temido has failed to deliver on its promise to reform the country’s healthcare system. The uneasiness is particularly great in the medical profession. There have been no wage increases for thirteen years, and doctors are only paid between 12 and 17 euros an hour for overtime in state hospitals. As a result, many migrate to the private healthcare sector, where better wages beckon.
According to Guimarães, nothing has improved since Temido took office four years ago. The shortage of doctors has continued to rise, and there are now more than 2,000 specialists missing. Patients often have to wait a year or more for surgical interventions. According to figures from the Medical Association, more than 200,000 people are waiting for an operation in Portugal. Those who are lucky enough to live in the rural Alentejo region can at least switch to hospitals in nearby Spain, for example in Badajoz.
Temido has never denied the problems of the precarious health system. Unforgotten is how she asked abroad for help in January last year when the Covid pandemic escalated in Portugal and hundreds of people died every day. At that time, Germany sent two dozen doctors, nurses and hygiene experts.
The austerity dictate of the EU has weakened the system
The Portuguese health system, which was once praised for its efficiency, has been suffering from structural weaknesses since before the Covid pandemic. After the crisis years between 2007 and 2015, government grants fell significantly. At that time, the EU had imposed tough austerity measures on the Portuguese so that they could get their budget under control again. This still has repercussions today, because government spending on health is still well below the EU average.
At the beginning of the summer, the Medical Association sounded the alarm because Portugal, with its 10.3 million inhabitants, now has an excess mortality rate of around 24 percent – four times as much as the rest of the EU. The migration of doctors to the private sector or abroad, especially to the UK, has also meant that many Portuguese no longer have a family doctor. The remaining staff in the state health system have to work more and more overtime every year.
After the resignation of the minister, Prime Minister Costa has now declared the reform of the health system to be a top priority and wants to take his time with the election of a new minister. In order to counteract a further shortage of doctors, his government now wants to pay 90 euros for every hour of overtime.