Doctors' Federation calls for national strike on October 24

The National Federation of Doctors (FNAM) called a strike this Thursday for October 24 , which will coincide with the Public Service strike, as it considers that the government is refusing to negotiate the medical career .

"Given that the Minister of Health is refusing to truly negotiate 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 24th throughout the country and on the islands," Fnam president Joana Bordalo e Sá told Lusa.

Fnam met this Thursday 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 National Health Service (SNS).

"The meeting we held today wasn't a true negotiation meeting. This was the presentation of a completed act with measures that we believe are truly harmful to the population and the NHS," the union leader criticized.

According to the official, the government plans to concentrate emergency services at a regional level, meaning that "it will leave pregnant women and newborns without immediate care."

"A concrete example is the south bank [of the Tagus]. ​​Pregnant women will have to continue traveling kilometers and kilometers 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 recalled that “a regional emergency is not a metropolitan emergency.”

"While hospitals in the Porto metropolitan area are just a few kilometers apart, this is not the case in most regions of the country," he noted.

Joana Bordalo e Sá also regretted the lack of an agenda and prior legislative 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, but even so, Fnam was at this meeting and we brought our proposals (...) for real solutions to have more doctors in the NHS, but this is not the path this Ministry of Health is taking," he stressed.

The union leader also warned that Ana Paula Martins “still hasn’t said a word about negotiating fair wages and decent working conditions that allow doctors to be retained in the NHS”, 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, at the same time that we're witnessing all of this, we continue to see the private sector investing millions — billions of investments that have already been announced for new private sector health units, because they know that the Luís Montenegro government will give them a return," he accused.

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

Public Administration workers will also be on strike on October 24th, demanding salary increases, career advancement, the reinstatement of public employment contracts, and the defense of public services, in a protest that aims to draw attention to the need to strengthen dignity and stability in the public sector.