Union claims that 28 INEM ambulances stopped today due to lack of technicians

“The day on which 50 years of democracy and freedom are celebrated is also a black day for INEM: 28 ambulances are closed today due to a lack of Pre-Hospital Emergency Technicians. There are thousands of Portuguese people without access to timely emergency medical care and differentiated because INEM is unable to fulfill its mission today”, the union reveals in a statement.

According to STEPH, the “shortage of technicians is due, above all, to the poor management that has prevailed at INEM over the last few years”, blaming the “retrograde, conservative and ineffective policies that keep more and more professionals away from the institute”.

“These technicians deserve respect, treatment, consideration and appreciation of their salaries and their careers. We have already wasted too much time”, the press release also reads.

And he continues: “enough of a management that has been destroying INEM’s assets and making services increasingly weaker, more ineffective, with great harm to the population. It is the citizens who often pay for their incapacity with their own lives of INEM in fulfilling its noble, necessary and indispensable mission”.

In this context, the union guarantees that “it will not fail to use all the ways within its reach so that the 25th of April and freedom also take place at INEM, through the appreciation of its professionals, for more effective emergency medical care, closer, that serve citizens better and save more lives”.

The president of STEPH, Rui Lázaro, also revealed to Lusa that “also in the CODU (Urgent Patient Guidance Centers) today, similar to what happened in recent days, there are several service stations closed due to a lack of technicians”.

Explaining the direct consequences of the reduction in resources, the union leader stated that, “in addition to delays in sending ambulances, there may be delays in responding to emergency calls”.

In response to Lusa, INEM indicated that today “there is no record of any difficulty in activating medical emergency resources or increased waiting times for calls to be answered by the Urgent Patient Guidance Center”.

“The emergency resources device is dimensioned according to foreseeable needs, having even been reinforced with some additional resources in light of the April 25th celebrations”, the response also reads.

The management of INEM also maintains that the “Integrated Medical Emergency System works as a network, in a logic of complementarity, being composed of more than 600 pre-hospital emergency means, from INEM and the partners firefighters and the Portuguese Red Cross, which provide a adequate response to needs”.