312. Finally?

It seems that finally someone is seriously concerned with the typical third world country and we still have around here, talk about oral health and how it has been systematically neglected by all the ministers who have gone through the health portfolio from 25 April 1974 by the former Health Minister Correia de Campos.

Now comes the good news by the current Minister of Health Ana Jorge, who finally has the wisdom and humility to face the problem and tackle it once, now proposing an investment of more than 25 million in checks - dentists, to be distributed to children aged four, five, seven, ten and thirteen years in 2009.

Unlike Correia de Campos (who advised parents to teach their children to brush their teeth every day), Ana Jorge knows that dental caries is an infectious disease - contagious and needs of medical procedure to be treated accordingly. We therefore hope that the Ministry of Health finally create all conditions to reverse the bleak left by his predecessors and to create conditions to make oral health a right for all citizens of this country, not just for a bourgeoisie wealthy with access to everything and anything, the result of social inequalities created and sustained by all governments in the last thirty years.

I recommend that the Minister Ana Jorge revitalize a new posture in front of his Ministry and who knows confront lobbyists installed, did not bow to interest groups more or less opportunistic and only have eyes for their own navels, that all to do that after 34 years after the April 25, 1974, finally all children and young Portuguese have the same access to treatment by oral health in our country, whether children of the working class or the bourgeoisie installed and live at the expense of power.

Further, it is expected that these 25 million euros annually channeled to oral health and youth are effectively fully expended only and only in medical procedures, which does not allow the Minister, a single deviation from this fund for other purposes, whatever they are, or to sustain employment of incompetent parasites installed in offices of secretaries of state or regional health authorities that over the past thirty years, little or nothing done for the sake of oral health and to reach a left neglect points of almost no return, without care less about that.

It's a good bet is just to continue the working group that conducted the National Study of Prevalence of Oral Diseases 2008; it is profitable synergies and focus on creating real oral health programs, completely beyond the reach of those who were the great responsible for more disarray for oral health in Portugal in which we live up to our days.

For me, unfortunately, these programs are thirty years too late and they can not remedy the neglect and close all doors that hit to get treatment in time, after being savagely treated by looking at the service of a particular Regional Health Administration, I definitely ruined my life forever, but that's another story that will be treated in another and was very short.

But I'll be around and I will continue to follow, day by day, how it develops a policy of oral health in Portugal.