Ana Paula Martins spoke to reporters after meeting with the managers of the Algarve Local Health Unit (ULS) in Faro, and explained that during the approximately four-hour meeting she gathered information about the "additional means" that the Government can "trigger", through the Ministry of Health, to support the plan prepared by regional entities for the summer.

"What is planned in the Local Health Unit's plan is to respond with the means that it has already managed to trigger and with a few more that we will naturally try to trigger during the next few weeks", the minister said, guaranteeing that she has "absolute confidence" in the work that is being done in the region to ensure this response.

When asked about the means that the Ministry of Health may have to trigger to ensure support for the ULS, Ana Paula Martins guaranteed that they will be "those that are necessary", emphasising that "in the Algarve, people are already very used [...] to living with those who are in the Algarve and to responding with those who are in the Algarve".

"This decision is planned and is a decision taken, therefore, as you know, together with the executive management [of the National Health Service] and with the Local Health Unit, which has a clinical director for the area of primary care and a clinical director for the area of hospital care", she said.

Ana Paula Martins indicated that there are scales and rotation models "that are different throughout the country" - and that those that "work" will be maintained -, but she pointed out that "there are others that have already been proven, in some areas, to need to be improved", with the Government paying "special attention" to the regions of Lisbon and Vale do Tejo and the Algarve.

"It does not mean that the rest of the country is not very important, the whole country is very important, but these are two areas where the Government focuses its attention essentially, namely in the scope of emergencies, which they mentioned here very well, paediatric or obstetric, therefore maternal or child, and naturally in what is the response to situations such as trauma, the situation of acute illness", she said.

The Minister of Health also stated that she had "reinforced" her "absolute confidence" in the plan drawn up by the Algarve ULS, but stressed that this plan must "be adjusted if there is a sudden need" for resources or to modify the response.

"And if there is a need, you can be sure that all the support that the Algarve region needs will appear", she guaranteed, arguing that the important thing is to have a plan and that it "adapts to the peaks of emergencies", more than the minister saying the number of doctors or nurses needed.

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