Ginecology and Obstetrics Chief Resigns at Lisbon's main Maternity
The doctor asked to step down on Monday of last week, the day the maternity hospital delivered 25 babies, the highest number since 2013.
Amidst an ongoing crisis in hospital emergency services, the head of the Gynecology-Obstetrics service at the Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital in Lisbon, Carlos Marques, has resigned.
Although it only became known on Wednesday, the resignation was submitted more than a week ago, on 12 August, the day the maternity hospital carried out 25 deliveries, the highest number since 2013.
Nevertheless, the administration of the São José Local Health Unit (in which the Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital is integrated) assures that this resignation “has had no impact on the normal functioning of the maternity hospital”.
The unit also emphasised that the doctor will remain in post until a new head is appointed, a process that is already underway.
Rádio Renascença reported the news, saying that Carlos Marques had justified his decision with the ‘heavy workload’, at a time when the largest public maternity hospital in the Greater Lisbon area has been breaking delivery records, due to the closures of several emergency departments.
Refusing to comment on this resignation, the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, recalled that the Government made a “commitment to reorganize” the gynecology-obstetrics emergency network, which it will do “in the coming months”.
She said that new proposals committee that was tasked with evaluating the situation will present its first results “by mid-September”.
Always open during the difficult month of August, unlike other gynaecology-obstetrics emergency services in Greater Lisbon, the Alfredo da Costa Maternity Hospital (MAC) delivered 25 babies, the highest number since 2013, precisely on the day Carlos Marques resigned, 12 August.
On that day, five gynaecology-obstetrics emergency departments were closed at the same time and, in addition to the deliveries, the maternity ward saw a high turnout - 98 admissions.
The following day, without making public the resignation of the person in charge of the service, the president of the board of directors of ULS São José, Rosa Valente de Matos, warned Lusa that it would not be possible to continue at this pace, not least because the team that broke the record for deliveries was sized to carry out a lower number of attendances. ‘The professionals have their limitations and are tired,’ he emphasised.
‘This effort cannot be continuous. The professionals can't cope, so we've been networking with the executive director of the National Health Service (SNS) so that pregnant women who can be discharged can go to their hospitals of origin,’ she explained, adding that 60% of the women the maternity hospital was attending were from outside the Lisbon area.
Rosa Valente de Matos also asked the SNS Executive Board for greater coordination between the various hospitals in the region, given the multiplication of rotating closures of emergency departments in this speciality, insisting that the ‘capacity of the MAC is also a little limited’.