A spokesperson for the Algarve University Hospital Centre (CHUA), which manages the Algarve’s state-run medical facilities including Portimão and Faro Hospital, said the new specialist would start duties sometime this month.
In a statement, the CHUA put paid to concerns that Portimão Hospital’s oncology ward could slowly be closing down, after some readers claimed they were being referred to Faro for treatments and consultations.
“No service or any type of remit in support of oncology patients has been closed at the Portimão hospital unit, which is part of the Algarve University Hospital Centre,” the statement stressed.
It went on to explain that, “to overcome some difficulties”, the administration of the CHUA “has been working to ensure that all patients in our Portimão unit have an effective, timely and quality response including, whenever necessary, counting on the support of the Oncology Services team of Faro hospital”, which the board says has “always provided backup” to the Western Algarve unit.
CHUA said that, at present, the vast majority of western Algarve patients “continue to be overseen and monitored locally in the Portimão hospital unit”, both in the field of specialty consultations and in the follow-up of treatments in the Oncology Day Hospital, and that “only some oncology pathologies that require a higher degree of differentiation in their treatment plan are referred to the Faro unit”, which is the region’s point of reference for more complex cases.
The comments come after The Portugal News approached the CHUA for clarification on the situation at Portimão’s Barlavento Hospital, after being told by a patient, who wished to remain anonymous, that it seemed the oncology service was slowly closing down.
“I went to get my meds and needed a new prescription. They said I had to ask Faro as the only oncologist in Portimão wouldn’t do them. They said the other oncologist wasn’t coming back. I was told I would now need to go to Faro, and I asked about patients say, from Aljezur, they said the same. Faro”.
The Algarve University Hospital Centre further emphasised that Portimão hospital “ensures the delivery of medication in a proximity approach, through the two hospital pharmacies in the region - one in Portimão and another in Lagos - which ensure medication is available to patients from this area, in articulation, whenever necessary, with the central pharmacy of the hospital unit of Faro, in the case of the most differentiated treatment plans that are also directly overseen in this unit”.