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Pedro Hispano Hospital inaugurates Advanced Endoscopy Center

Advanced Endoscopy Center "is a big step for the SNS



The Minister of Health inaugurated this Friday, December 16, the Advanced Endoscopy Center of the Local Health Unit of Matosinhos (ULSM), installed in a renovated space of the Pedro Hispano Hospital, which now has a highly differentiated response in gastroenterology. The center is named after the engineer Carlos Moreira da Silva, patron of the project.

At the inauguration ceremony, followed by the conference "The Role of Local Health Units in the NHS", Manuel Pizarro praised the investment made in the ULS of Matosinhos and stressed that this path of betting on differentiation and cutting-edge technology will allow patients to be treated better and will also attract and retain more professionals in the NHS. This center will be coordinated by Francisco Baldaque, a physician specialized in Digestive Oncology and Diagnostic and Therapeutic Endoscopy, senior consultant at Karolinska Hospital in Sweden, and who has also been a hospital assistant at the Gastroenterology Department of Pedro Hispano Hospital since 2020.

"What we want with this center is to attract values. Bringing competent people to work in the National Health Service. We want to be a magnet for good professionals, doctors and nurses, and we want to be a magnet for future generations," said the director of the Gastroenterology Service, Francisco Baldaque.

Speaking to the Lusa news agency, the doctor said that the ULSM Gastroenterology service "has several components and one of the very strong components is endoscopy."

"Today, endoscopy allows us to perform treatments that used to be done by surgery. We can already do very advanced treatments by endoscopy and even in an outpatient regime", he added, referring, for example, to early cancers of the esophagus, stomach and other organs of the digestive tract.

According to Francisco Baldaque, with endoscopic removal, "many of these cases are cured.


...a great step for the SNS

"I don't know if this is a great step for humanity, but I'm sure it's a great step for the SNS," said Manuel Pizarro, adding that this project is proof that new differentiating centers can emerge in the National Health Service when administration and professionals work together, in this case with the support of civil society. "It's extraordinary that someone from civil society, a renowned businessman, Carlos Moreira da Silva, gave us the support he did. It is common in other countries in Europe, it is less common in Portugal and I hope that this example is properly recognized by all and that it can be strengthened and spread", praised the Health Minister. "It's true that we have more and more technological answers, but this naturally generates an increase in expense. No matter how much efficiency we have the obligation to generate, expectations increase expenditure and we need health to be a commitment of society as a whole, not just of the SNS.

At the conference on the role of ULS, the Local Health Unit of Matosinhos honored the former Health Minister Maria de Belém Roseira, who 23 years ago created, in Matosinhos, the first Local Health Unit of the country. The Minister of Health also recognized the role of the former governor and the vision of the Government when, in 1999, it advanced with this figure of organization of health care in the SNS - in which primary care and hospital care of a territory are brought together under the same administration - and renewed the commitment to strengthen this model in the SNS.

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