After the cataract and eye treatments, which were the basis of mediated trips to the Caribbean island of Cuba, the Board of Vila Real de Santo António will now address the oral health of residents. To start with the program, six private hospitals have signed a protocol with the municipality, which will disburse a sum of 300 thousand euros.
In order to prioritize the most urgent cases, the county has also hired a dentist who, over the past two months, has been making weekly screenings in the three parishes of the county. In the case of ophthalmology, there was no network of partnerships with the private Portuguese because prices and quality were not competitive with Cuba. Now, there was an understanding of dental professionals of the county who were willing to practice a value below market prices for the treatments that were made here in the county, said the mayor Luis Gomes to Barlavento.
Asked whether the measure will open a new breach in relations with the Ministry of Health, the Social Democrat said that the only problem that exists is between the National Health Service (SNS) and the population. There are no dentists at the health center of Vila Real de Santo António and the Hospital de Faro there is only one or two, to treat the entire region, he argued.
For now, the protocol guarantees funding until the end of the year, although its color depends on the renewal policy that would occupy the chair of the executive after 11 October. The protocol is run and maintained as long as there is political will and needs of the population. It's like the protocol we have with the Republic of Cuba, which is endless unless either party can terminate it, said Gomes.
According to the mayor of Vila Real de Santo António, the 300 thousand euros now available are not sufficient to guarantee the treatments of the 900 people already on waiting lists, making it necessary to give priority to children and the elderly.
According to the program coordinator Vila Real de Santo Antonio to Smiling, Paulo Sousa, attention will be redoubled in the younger age ranges, where there are children under 10 years in the extraction of permanent teeth is now the only possible solution . About the causes of this situation, the dentist cultural issues associated with weak economic capacity of families. Note that there is, in Vila Real, groups with a high incidence of dental problems due to lack of resources to pay for routine dental treatment in private hospitals, he concluded.
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It is shameful to be Portuguese and clearly aware that the Ministry of Health, Directorate General of Health and the Regional Health Administration of the Algarve allow the existence of children under 10 years old has no permanent teeth, right in the XXI Century, in popular tourist region of Portugal. The question is simple: any child under the age of 10 years family of the Minister of Health, Minister of Education, Mr Director-General of Health, the Chairman of the Board of ARS Algarve and the President of the Dental have lost their permanent teeth?
After all, where do the billions of euros in EU funds? Is it better to invest in airports and TGV or the health of the Portuguese? It will be more interesting to give sex education in schools that address the oral health of all children without exception?
This example proves that it is possible to give a complete circuit around the bleak panorama of oral health in Portugal when the representatives of power and dentists sit at a table and dialogue to reach agreement. The oral health problems no longer exist in Portugal if it was always the spirit to be followed by government officials and representatives of dentists and dentists.
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