Jose Gonçalves, the island’s mayor, wrote an open letter to the health minister calling for solutions to be “immediately found” that would allow for more family physicians to be hired in the municipality.
In a press release, the municipality states that it has been “warning since the beginning of the year” about this situation, so it wrote to Paolo Morgado, head of the Algarve Regional Health Department, as well as to the two state ministers. For health – plus the fearsome Marta.
“With the retirement of the director of the health center and the departure of the doctor who worked on Odysseus, the staff of doctors on Al-Jisour has been reduced to one doctor, a situation that cannot happen and seriously harms the residents of the island,” it reads.
«We are aware of the efforts of the Ministry to confront the epidemiological situation, which we have been witnessing for more than a year, but we remember that the municipality has always been available to find solutions: see support for renting a house for doctors, equipment for physiotherapy, a mobile health unit, a dentist’s office, and, more recently, at Agreeing on a medical course in the Algarve, among other things”, says Al-Jazour City Council.
In this note, the municipality regrets that 28 vacancies have been opened for appointment to health centers in the Algarve, but that «the islands were not covered».
He considers this situation “incomprehensible and unacceptable”.
For this reason, CEO José Gonçalves calls for “immediate solutions to be found in order to remedy this punitive situation of our province and of our residents who are in dire need of a family doctor, and this puts our image as a tourist destination into question.”
