The President of the Republic, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and the Minister of Health, Nísia Trindade, launched today (6) in Rio de Janeiro a program to reduce queues for elective surgeries, exams and specialized consultations in the Unified Health System (SUS) . Initially, R$ 200 million will be allocated. In order to have access to resources, each state must present an action plan, which must establish priorities according to the local reality. In this first moment, the focus will be on reducing the queues for elective surgeries, mainly abdominal, orthopedic and ophthalmological. Later, the effort will be turned to the examinations and specialist consultations. According to Nísia Trindade, in some places, queue reduction policies already exist with positive results. “Some states have advanced planning. The situation in Brazil is very unequal”, pondered minister Nísia. She also explained that each plan will include goals agreed with the Ministry of Health. In his speech, Lula assessed that access to medical specialists is a distant reality for the poorest population. “He even has access to the health center to make the first consultation. But when the doctor asks him to visit another specialist, he waits eight months, nine months, a year. Sometimes he dies without having the assistance”, said the president. “Not everyone can afford an ophthalmologist. It seems like something very far from the poor,” he added. Lula also made an analogy with Brasil Sorridente, a program created in 2003 during his first government. “I traveled the country a lot and the thing that made me the most sad was seeing a person without any teeth or missing four, five teeth in their mouth. The person could no longer smile without putting their hand in their mouth. I thought it was necessary to transform the dental issue into a public health issue. It was impressive not to have dentistry in public health plans”. Super Centro Carioca The launch of the program took place together with the inauguration of the Super Centro Carioca de Saúde (photo), in the neighborhood of Benfica, in the northern part of the capital of Rio de Janeiro. Since October of last year, the facility has been providing services in various areas such as angiology, cardiology, neurology, dermatology, gynecology, orthopedics and urology, among others. Now, the structure also has examination services, including endoscopy, colonoscopy and magnetic resonance imaging, and a center for ophthalmological diagnoses and treatments. The city of Rio de Janeiro works with the goal of zeroing out the list of eye surgeries in the city by June. In the second half, the Super Centro Carioca de Saúde would begin to serve residents of other municipalities in the state of Rio de Janeiro. It is estimated that there are 16,000 people in the state waiting to have eye surgery, half of them in the capital.
Agência Brasil
Folha Nobre - Desde 2013 - ©