"I prefer to wait for the investigation that is underway, but we would like to say that the video that was published in relation to the issue of the time the doctors were out of the office is not real," the president of SINMEA, Adriano Manuel, told Lusa this Wednesday.
According to the union leader, the aforementioned hospital unit has a shortage of experienced doctors and at the time of the events, only two specialist doctors were on duty, and they had left their respective offices to treat other seriously ill patients.
He argued that the David Bernardino Pediatric Hospital (HPDB) is still considered a teaching hospital, where, he stressed, there is a very large deficit of experienced staff in this hospital, with only almost 30 specialist doctors.
"Currently there should not be more than 30 specialist doctors in the hospital, because most of the experienced medical population left the hospital in search of better conditions, others were removed by the minister with the prospect that they would cover other hospitals (...) and the HPDB was left without experienced staff to deal with the great concerns that afflict them", he said.
The Ministry of Health decided to suspend the medical team that was on duty at the HPDB emergency bank on the night of January 1, 2025, where a two-year-old child died after allegedly waiting one hour and thirty-eight minutes to be seen.
Images that circulated on social media portrayed the outcry of several citizens in the hospital's emergency room, showing doctors absent from their respective offices.
Safeguarding the need to await the results of the ongoing research, Adriano Manuel reaffirmed that the bench team that was on duty was made up of just two specialist doctors for around 14 resident doctors who were "inexperienced and who need to be approached about pediatrics".
"All of this has a negative impact on us being able to provide quality medical care in our institution, even so we will wait for the results of the research", concluded the pediatrician at HPDB.
