Since the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, the number of professionals working in the Unified Health System (SUS) has grown by more than 20%. From 2,376,847 specialists in February 2019, the total went to 2,876,430 in the same month of this year, according to data from the National Registry of Health Establishments (CNES), made available by the Ministry of Health.
Several of these professionals were hired to attend the Public Health Emergency of National Importance (Espin). The end of the regime within 30 days, after the decree signed by the federal government on Friday (22), raised concerns about what will happen to doctors, nurses, technicians.
By means of a note, the National Council of Health Secretaries (Conass) guided states to link their rules to the declaration of an international public health emergency, decreed by the World Health Organization (WHO). According to the council, which advocated a period of 90 days for adaptation, the objective is to ensure continuity of services.
The president of Conass, Nésio Fernandes de Medeiros Junior, confirmed that the growth of public network teams is related to the needs imposed by the spread of the coronavirus.
In Espírito Santo, Medeiros Junior said that there were 630 beds in the public and philanthropic network before the pandemic. Today, there are 1,250. The number of professionals followed the expansion to meet the demand, from the admission facilitated by Espin. In the state, for example, there are about a thousand contracts for emergency services.
“The size of the system today is different, the number of people, a series of linked norms are not fully adjusted. I don’t need to subject the entire public machine to an administrative rush. States and municipalities are autonomous to maintain the state of emergency. A federal sphere, which has the function of coordinating, when it withdraws a rule that it supports, it gets in the way”, criticized Medeiros Junior.
THE CNN contacted the Ministry of Health about the note released by Conass. To analyst Basília Rodrigues, the ministry claimed that the secretaries were unable to justify the need for a longer term.
“I don’t see much difficulty for state and municipal secretariats to adapt to what already exists in practice… These budget issues can be dealt with legally”, the minister also declared in an announcement to the press on Friday.
According to the federal government, the end of the state of emergency will not cause the interruption of any public policy or budget transfer. In addition, the Ministry of Health will monitor and guide states and municipalities on actions. The folder also announced the beginning of the call for the first professionals of the Doctors for Brazil program, with 4,600 vacancies in the country.
For Conass, the 30-day transition period is insufficient to reorganize the network. The secretaries argue that the Union has the role of seeking a consensus with the states and municipalities. In addition, he sees risks of service discontinuities and the need to incorporate the almost 500,000 health professionals who entered the SUS in three years.
Chrystina Barros, a researcher at the Center for Studies in Management of Health Services at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), also believes that the period is short. “Thirty days for you to revisit your network, revisit surveillance, still in the midst of a pandemic, is a short time,” she told CNN.
She argues that it is necessary to consider whether the increase of just over 20% in the network is enough to contain the deficit of professionals that already existed before the pandemic and meet the demand that was dammed in the period.
“This last week in particular, I had contact with cancer diagnostic laboratories. The number of patients with dammed diagnoses is very large. We came out of the wave of Covid-19, but it is not known what state other diseases were in. The network requires investments, as many chronic diseases remain untreated”, he pointed out.
Source: CNN Brasil
