The postponement of the construction of the Central Hospital of the Algarve is a "serious and irreparable injustice" according to local MP, Cristóvão Norte, who has been picking through the State Budget for 2018, spotting the almost complete lack on investment planned for the region next year.
Norte’s list of projects that were promised but that will not go ahead or will be pushed into 2019, include the EN125 remodeling in the eastern Algarve, the dredging and extension to Portimão’s quayside, the rail link to Faro airport and the bridge to link Alcoutim to Spain.
One more for the 'no investment' list, is the standing joke that the Algarve will be getting a new, centrally located hospital even after the foundation stone has been laid in two separate ceremonies in the past 12 years.
This investment first was announced in 2006 and Norte points out that the State Budget for next year includes the building of four new hospitals in the country, but none of them will be in the Algarve.
This ‘postponement’, "is a serious and irreparable injustice," huffed the Social Democratic Party MP during the budget debate covering the health sector.
Norte pointed out that the minister was happy to announce the government is “preparing to move towards the construction of hospitals in Lisbon, Seixal, Évora and Sintra,” when the 2006 technical study put a new hospital in the Algarve "second" on the list of national investment priorities, with two of them, Seixal and Évora, behind the Algarve in the queue, with Sintra not even included in the 2006 report.
For the PSD MP, the decision to not invest in a new Algarve Central Hospital is contrary to the proclamations that ‘health in the Algarve’ is at the top of the government’s concerns as the Algarve is the region with the greatest shortage of doctors, the fewest surgeries, fewest consultations and with the worst health record in the country.