VRSA advances with incentives to retain doctors and strengthen access to healthcare

The Vila Real de Santo António City Council has approved a series of measures to encourage healthcare professionals to stay in the municipality, where housing costs are making it difficult to fill vacancies, the mayor said today.

Álvaro Araújo (PS) also called on the government to make an Emergency Medical and Resuscitation Vehicle (VMER) available for the Sotavento (eastern) Algarve, to add to the three that are located in the Algarve, namely in Portimão, Albufeira and Faro.

Speaking to Lusa news agency, the Mayor said that the Municipal Regulation to Support the Retention of Doctors and Other Health Professionals was published in the Official Gazette on June 30 and creates "financial and logistical incentives" to help retain professionals and reduce the number of people without a family doctor.

"The difficulty in attracting and retaining family doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals, combined with the aging of the clinical staff and constraints on emergency shifts, has compromised the responsiveness of local healthcare units," the municipality argued.

Professionals who opt for support must work in the municipality's health units, integrated into the Algarve Local Health Unit (ULS), and the measure aims to guarantee "the quality of primary health care" and the local Basic Emergency Service (SUB).

Among the approved benefits are subsidies for accommodation, travel or the reduction of tariffs and fees.

"We cannot allow our region to have a shortage of family doctors. And what we've done is, in some way, create reasons for doctors and healthcare professionals to want to settle here, because the regulations are designed to support not only doctors but also other healthcare professionals who live within a 50-kilometer radius of our municipality," stated Álvaro Araújo.

The mayor, who refuses to accept that residents have no access to a family doctor, argued that all citizens should have "the same access to healthcare" and highlighted that it is increasingly difficult for professionals to establish themselves in the municipality and the Algarve.

"Therefore, the only way we could do this was to create this regulation," he explained, pointing to the high cost of housing as one of the main factors hindering the retention of professionals in municipalities in the Algarve and Baixo Guadiana, such as Alcoutim and Castro Marim, which also have incentives of this type in place.

Álvaro Araújo stated that there is a “great lack of housing at normal costs” in the Algarve and Vila Real de Santo António.

"Houses are priced at prices that the middle class, not even healthcare professionals, cannot afford, and rents are at almost a thousand euros or more," he said.

For the mayor, "this is the big problem with any profession, with our young people, with our population in general."

Therefore, he admitted the possibility that, in the future, this support could be extended to teachers or members of the security forces.

"Since the Central Government does not create solutions, it is, as always, the municipalities that must create these solutions," he emphasized.

Regarding the deployment of a VMER in the Sotavento region of the Algarve, Álvaro Araújo said that "there cannot be first-class and second-class Portuguese" and that the population of that area has the right to a means of relief that "saves lives" and will cover "a territory between Tavira, Castro Marim, Alcoutim and Vila Real [de Santo António], of 1,500 square kilometers".

"The closest VMER is in Faro. If there's a problem in Alcoutim, if there's a problem in Vila Real de Santo António and one of these vehicles is needed, when help arrives, the person will likely survive," he said.