Patients visiting Portuguese hospitals with urgent cases are having to wait more than nine hours in some cities until they can be admitted into hospitals.

The government’s National Health Service – the SNS – reported on Monday that many hospitals in the capital Lisbon are struggling with high demands and shortages in labour.

Urgent patients at the Amadora Sintra Hospital in the outskirts of Lisbon faced an average of eight hour waiting periods before they were able to see a medical professional.

But the excessively long wait times are not just limited to Lisbon. In Coimbra and Portimão, nine hour wait times for urgent patients were also reported. The situation there slightly improved later in the day after local health officials activated contingency plans to better manage the situation.

The delays are not just affecting needing patients, but also other state services. Mario Conde, a Fire Brigade Commander in Amadora says the delays are suffocating their resources.  

“We have some constraints in the emergency service for the population because we have a lot of services in the area of ​​hospital support and having an ambulance at the hospital for 40 minutes is a long time and we can hardly provide quick and effective assistance with this waiting time because there is a lack of resources for all the people.”

The increased demand on Portuguese health facilities is due to a recent outbreak of bird flu. The World Organisation for Animal Health (WOAH) reported an outbreak of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) strains among poultry on a farm near Lisbon on Monday.

The H5N1 strain was detected in a flock of more than 55,000 birds in the village of São João das Lampas, approximately 40 km away from the capital. The outbreak caused the death of almost 280 birds according to the Paris-based WOAH who were citing Portuguese authorities.

The spread of avian influenza, commonly referred to as bird flu, has raised concerns among governments and the poultry industry after proving deadly in recent years. The spread of the virus in the past has also disrupted supply chains significantly, resulting in higher food prices as well as the risk of human transmission.

“The flu virus is on the increase, we’re not at the peak yet, we’re still in a growing phase. And the fact that we have a low vaccination rate under the age of 85 means that the virus can circulate more easily,” says Gustavo Tato Borges from the Public Health Medical Association.

The SNS did however report later on Monday that wait times were slowly going down. Portuguese officials say that regardless of the wait times, all patients seeking medical attention were receiving treatment eventually.

“There are more emergency rooms open, we currently have 8 clinics open in the Coimbra region, we have more inpatient beds for respiratory patients and this is what is allowing us to have shorter waiting times. Patients are being reorganized, but even though there is a waiting time for the first medical observation, all the patients in our care are being treated,” says Claudia Nazareth, Clinical Director of the Coimbra Local Health Unit.

But the situation remains challenging, as the Portuguese health service is not operating at full capacity.

Six emergency services were closed on Monday, while another 13 services were reserved for internal emergencies, only working on cases referred by the National Emergency Medical Institute (INEM) and the SNS line.

The closed services were mostly in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region, with only one in the centre, which only deals with obstetrics, gynaecology and paediatric emergencies.