"Given the Minister of Health's refusal to truly negotiate with the medical profession and, above all, because she has made decisions that put the population at risk, we are announcing a doctors' strike for October 24 nationwide," FNAM president Joana Bordalo e Sá told Lusa.

The FNAM met today with the Minister of Health, Ana Paula Martins, to demand better working conditions and adequate pay for doctors, warning of the growing pressure on the Unified Health System (SNS).

"The meeting we had today was not a real negotiation meeting. This was the presentation of a completed act with measures that we understand are truly harmful to the population and the SNS," criticized the union leader.

According to her, the regulatory measure foresees a concentration of emergency services at the regional level, meaning that "it will leave pregnant women and newborns without local care."

"A concrete example is the south bank [of the Tagus]. ​​Pregnant women will have to continue traveling kilometres and kilometres to access emergency care, closing the obstetrics emergency rooms in Barreiro and Setúbal. They'll concentrate everything in Almada and leave the rest of the population without local care," said Joana Bordalo e Sá, adding that it's an "area with almost a million people."

The union leader noted that "a regional emergency is not a metropolitan emergency."

"While in the Porto metropolitan region, hospitals are just a few kilometers apart, this isn't the case in most regions of the country," she noted.

Joana Bordalo e Sá also lamented the lack of prior legislative agendas and proposals, considering that this goes against "good collective bargaining practices and good faith in negotiations."

"This is a protocol failure, a violation of good collective bargaining practices, and it was already clear that this meeting would be unlikely to be productive. However, FNAM attended this meeting, and we presented our proposals (...) for real solutions to increase the number of doctors in the SNS, but this is not the path taken by the Ministry of Health," she emphasized.

The union leader also warned that Ana Paula Martins "remains silent on negotiating fair wages and decent working conditions that would allow doctors to be retained in the SNS," indicating that FNAM will meet with public health business entities under the mediation of the Directorate-General for Employment and Labor Relations (DGERT) next Monday in Porto.

"It's a path that [Prime Minister] Luís Montenegro and Ana Paula Martins don't want to follow, because, while we're witnessing all this, we continue to see the private sector investing millions—billions of investments that have already been announced for new private health units, because they know that Luís Montenegro's government will give them a return," she accused.

The union leader said that the Ministry still had to "send the documents, possibly for a future meeting, for a final meeting."

Public servants will also go on strike on October 24th, demanding a salary increase, career advancement, the restoration of public service contracts, and the defense of public services, in a protest aimed at drawing attention to the need to strengthen dignity and stability in the state sector.