Abstracts Health Sciences

Serviço Nacional de Saúde em crise: propostas para uma reforma de saúde pública

by Sabrine Willrich

Health is a fundamental right – a part of the category of social rights – guaranteed to all citizens, enshrined in article 64, number 1, of the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic. Therefore, it is up to the State, as guarantor of social well-being, the duty to defend and promote the right to health through a universal, general and free-of-charge National Health Service. In order to guarantee the right to health protection, it is incumbent upon the State to promote access to all citizens, regardless of their economic condition, to preventive, curative and rehabilitation medicine, as well as to ensure rational and efficient coverage across the country in human resources and health facilities. In this case, the State has the duty to ensure disease prevention, health guarantee and disease care, through primary, differentiated, continuous and palliative health care categories. However, in practice, the Portuguese State has not been fulfilling its legal duty, with the public health service in Portugal, having faced a terrible crisis for some years. This crisis is associated with the lack of human and material capacity – insufficient number of professionals, shortage of material and lack of adequate physical space – resulting from cuts in public expenditure on health. These factors affect the quality of the public health service. Henceforth, in pursuit of the public interest, the State’s greatest challenge is to invest in public health policies, considering the available financial resources in order to provide a quality and efficient health service. Thus, the present study aims to present proposals for improving the National Health Service.