The Mayor, who is also the former president of the Portuguese Medical Association, defends that “When a patient, a user, or a person needs help, they need to be able to call their family team, those who know them, to ask questions”.

Speaking during a ceremony to deliver 15 electric vehicles to the municipalities of Coimbra, Mealhada, Mira, Catanhede, and Ansião for use by the Primary Health Care (CSP), the mayor stressed the need to take the next step towards personalising healthcare. He argued that distributing the workload of the SNS 24 Line to family teams would result in a manageable caseload.

“If we were to distribute the calls answered on the SNS 24 Line among the family teams, we would see that this would be an absolutely beatable statistic: manageable by the teams and with the personalised information from those who know the person calling”, José Silva defended.

José Manuel Silva strongly opposes the use of impersonal systems to address health concerns. He underscored the importance of direct access to family teams, explaining, “We have to personalise healthcare, and we have to give everyone who has a healthcare team, doctor, nurse, the opportunity to call to ask a question and even make an extra appointment”.

The mayor also expressed concerns about the gradual decline of public health institutions, particularly the Regional Health Administration of the Center (ARS Centro). “The ARS has been slowly dying, it almost reminds me of what happened with the SEF [Foreigners and Borders Service]: the traumatic closure of the SEF. And then everyone came to the conclusion that the SEF was necessary after all and they had to rush to find replacements”.