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Pharmacists in public health services start a two-day strike today (Tuesday 25th Oct), which will be repeated in November, for the review and update of salary scales and full consideration of the time of service in the SNS, relating to career progression.
The strike, called by the National Union of Pharmacists, includes two days in October (today and Wednesday) and two in November (15th and 16th) and covers all health services dependent on the ministries of Health, Labour, Solidarity and Social Security.
In addition to professional development and the full count of the time of service in the SNS for the purposes of promotion and career progression, the union also requires the effective linking of pharmacists to work in the National Health Service (SNS) with precarious contracts and the adequacy of the number of professionals to the real needs and complexity of the activities developed.
In the strike notice, the union also asks for the recognition and approval, by the Ministry of Health/Central Administration of the Health System, of the specialist titles awarded by the Ordem dos Farmacêuticos, as well as the definition and regulation “of a special process” for regularisation of access to pharmaceutical specialty/residence, by pharmacists hired after March 1, 2020.
It also denounces the “precariousness, lack of stability and bad working conditions in pharmaceutical services”, as well as the “lack of safety in the integrated circuit of medicines and other pharmaceutical products”.
The minimum services will be ensured in services that operate uninterruptedly 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
In previous statements to the Lusa agency, Henrique Reguengo, from the National Union of Pharmacists, considered that the National Health Service (SNS) has become “a very unattractive place for those who start their professional career”
“There is no National Health Service without a well-structured and capable pharmaceutical activity, whether in hospital pharmacy, clinical analysis and genetics, which are the three specialties that pharmacists have in the SNS, but for that we need to attract the best of we. And with this outlook, clearly that’s not going to happen,” he said.
Source Lusa – Photo by Mario Cruz