Armed Forces hospital with 163 more posts

The Minister of Defense announced this Monday that the recruitment plan for the Armed Forces Hospital for 2025 foresees the admission of 163 professionals to minimize the constraints of that unit that operates with 67% of the expected staff.

“The recruitment plan for 2025 already foresees the admission of 163 more professionals, including 14 doctors, 15 nurses, 13 senior diagnostic and therapeutic technicians and 62 operational assistants who will certainly help with some of the problems”, revealed this Monday Nuno Melo who presided over the ceremony commemorating the 11th anniversary of the Armed Forces Hospital, which took place this afternoon, at the Porto branch.

Responding to the concerns of the director of the Armed Forces Hospital (HFAR), Brigadier General José Pinheiro Monge, who denounced the constraints caused by the lack of civilian workers in different areas, the minister reiterated the Government's commitment to military health, which, he argued, cannot be “overlooked” in the face of the National Health Service (SNS).

“We want the best health professionals to work at HFAR, but for this to happen, conditions need to be created. Therefore, the reorganization of the system will be essential to ensure the articulation and support of HFAR's military health with the National Health System, safeguarding its military matrix and the primary mission of supporting the Armed Forces, but articulating with the NHS for the benefit of all Portuguese people, whether in the management of waiting lists or in contingency situations, but with a focus on the military mission”, he argued.

Recalling, among other investments, the acquisition of the Da Vinci robotic surgical system, which involved an investment of around 11 million euros, the Minister of National Defence gave the guarantee that military health will be, as in the last 11 months of Government, a priority in the next legislature, particularly with regard to equipment, where, he pointed out, solid steps must be taken.

In the opening speech at the anniversary ceremony of that unit, the director of HFAR denounced that the hospital operates “with only 67% of the staff foreseen in its civil and military personnel maps , “a reality that conditions the existential activity and accentuates the need for reinforcement measures”.

Although in 2023 and 2024, that health unit has, through a competitive process, opened recruitment for 336 workers - of which 327 have already started work - the departure, in the last three years, "of 104 civilian workers and 39 military personnel without equivalent replacement has worsened the existing deficit", says that person in charge.

For this reason, he argued, “it continues to be essential, in 2025, to hire 163 civilian workers from different categories, a process that awaits authorization from the competent entities”.