Portugal: Algarve health sector strike in peak season ‘doubly worrying’ – mayor

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Portugal: Algarve health sector strike in peak season ‘doubly worrying’ – mayor

7:28 CAT | 06 Aug 2025

FILE - For illustration purposes only. [File photo: Lusa]

The strike in the health sector called for Thursday in Portugal’s Algarve region is “doubly worrying” because it coincides with the peak of the summer tourist season, the president of the Algarve Intermunicipal Community (AMAL), António Miguel Pina, said on Tuesday.

“It is doubly worrying because, in addition to the Algarve needing this care, at the height of summer, when the population is four or five times greater than during other periods of the year, it will give a bad image of a destination that is not safe from a healthcare point of view,” he said.

Speaking to Lusa, the president of AMAL said he understood the reasons for the strike, as those who live in the Algarve “recognise the effort that the entire sector, all professionals, nurses, assistants and also doctors make to provide the care that is necessary” for those who live in and visit the region.

Doctors, nurses and other health professionals will go on a 24-hour strike between midnight and 11.59 p.m. on Thursday in the Algarve, in protest against the lack of professionals in the sector and the worsening working conditions.

According to António Miguel Pina, “there is a serious lack of investment” in Algarve hospitals, compounded by the fact that, “after more than a year”, the government has still not given “a clear and concrete statement about the construction of the new hospital”, which would be a “light at the end of the tunnel”.

“But above all, there is also a lack of dialogue and what we are seeing is that the minister [of health], already tired, is finding it difficult to talk to health professionals,” he argued, considering that dialogue seems to have been exhausted.

On the other hand, António Miguel Pina, also the Socialist mayor of Olhão, also considers that there is a lack of housing policy capable of retaining not only health professionals in the region, but also, for example, teachers, suggesting that a solution that existed in the past, namely staff accommodation, be resumed.

Added to this problem is the lack of working conditions for these professionals: “health centres, responsibility for which has been transferred to the local authorities, despite the efforts they are making, many of them do not have air conditioning, I know what I’m talking about,” he concludes.

The strike planned for Thursday was called by the Southern Zone Doctors’ Union, the Portuguese Nurses’ Union and the Union of Public Service Workers of the South and Autonomous Regions.

Source: Lusa