“It is a project that we want to develop quickly, with a very short-term financial return and will be extremely advantageous to treat patients locally, translating into an advance for the Algarve, even before the new Central Hospital [of the Algarve] is built”, said Horácio Guerreiro.

The lack of facilities for oncological diagnoses and treatments in the region has forced patients to move to clinics and hospitals outside the Algarve, namely to Spain.

Treatment in Spain

“The region does not have the necessary equipment to perform certain types of treatments, which forces patients to leave the region, usually to Lisbon, sometimes to Coimbra, Huelva and Seville, in Spain”, he noted.

According to Horácio Guerreiro, the fact that the public criticized the fact that patients were being sent for treatments in Seville, to the detriment of the Algarve, “only results from the real lack of knowledge of the situation”.

This measure, he explained, is the result of an international public tender for radiosurgery treatments, to which two companies competed, one Portuguese and the other Spanish.

“The service was awarded to the Spanish company, renowned in the clinical area and which presented guarantees of medical quality at a lower price than the other competitor”, he advanced.

Patients who travel to Seville are provided with ambulance transport by the company and “they are treated in a hospital environment, with excellent inpatient and intensive care, if needed”, unlike the Faro clinic, “which is an outpatient clinic and, if there is a problem, they have to be transferred to the hospital”.

In the opinion of the clinical director of CHUA, the distance of about 200 kilometres between Faro and Seville, “is not a problem for patients, as their condition is assessed in advance”.

“We want excellence in the care of our patients, that is our main concern, and we also believe that the radiotherapy treatment that is carried out in the Algarve is also excellent”, he highlighted.

Facilities for the Algarve

Horácio Guerreiro recalled that there are other exams that are carried out outside the Algarve, namely, PET-TAC and some resonances, “because the region does not have the capacity to perform them, whether for patients with cancer or not”.

Hence, he argues, for the need to create a cancer centre in the Algarve, equipped with state-of-the-art advanced equipment for this type of disease and “with the highest levels of quality”.

“We are waiting for the transfer of land by Loulé Council, with the Cancer Centre to be located on the edge of the municipalities of Faro and Loulé, in the area planned for the new central hospital unit”, he concluded.