The “More Health in the Parishes of Vinhais” program allocates €300 to each participating parish council, representing an annual investment by the municipality of over €93,000.

“Due to the size of our municipality, a very large municipality, it is also an ageing municipality, the area of ​​health is always a fundamental area and what is intended, with this proximity service, also increasing this amount, is that the parish councils have greater capacity (…) it can be nursing, it can be the delivery of medicines,” said the mayor, Luís Fernandes, in statements to Lusa.

According to the municipality, each parish will be able to "identify its priorities and develop initiatives tailored to the local reality."

"In the area of ​​health, the parish councils will be able to see what, let's say, services they want, what is most needed, what they understand to be the most prioritised. There are parish councils that already have nursing services, physiotherapy services; others even have a doctor who goes there once a month or every two weeks," explained Luís Fernandes, noting that the protocol may even be different from parish to parish, with the municipalities defining what they want.

The city council and the participating parish councils will sign the protocol by the end of the year, and it may cover more than 4,000 people living in the municipality's villages.

“What we want with this community service is, at times, to resolve situations or help in specific situations, and also to help identify certain aspects at the health level, to almost diagnose some situations that can then be referred. The nurse, when seeing some people, for example in a locality, can himself identify a situation that requires another type of intervention, or a consultation with some urgency, or some examination,” he stressed.

This program also aims to create partnerships with other entities, such as the Vinhais health centre and the Local Health Unit of the Northeast, in a municipality where “everyone has a family doctor,” according to the mayor.

Even so, the mayor complained about extending the open consultation hours at the Vinhais health centre, which operates Monday to Friday from 8 am to 10 pm and on weekends from 9 am to 10 pm.

“What we intended was not until midnight, but 24 hours (…) at least at certain times of the year. I understand that it makes sense for health centres in large urban centres to be open longer during vaccination periods or flu outbreaks. Why shouldn't they be here?”, he questioned.

Luís Fernandes also wants more diagnostic resources at the health centre, such as tests and examinations, which “would allow us to empty the hospital emergency rooms”.

When patients from this municipality need tests, they have to travel to Bragança, the district capital, where the nearest hospital is located, 35 kilometres away, which translates to a travel time of between 40 and 45 minutes.

“We know that, often, we look at this through numbers, through statistics, but health cannot be looked at that way; a person is a person and should be looked at in a different way. The municipality is here substituting for something that is not within the municipality's own competence (…), but we do it, and we will continue to do it, because we understand well the importance that this has, and therefore, all the measures that we can take to help, we will continue to take, without failing to claim the others that seem important to us and that, sometimes, we are not even talking about such substantial financial values,” he concluded.

The municipality of Vinhais also provides a daily allowance of €50 for accommodation and €15 for meals to doctors who provide open consultations at the health centre, as well as assistance with rent payments of €200 for doctors who settle in the municipality.