Seixal requires public hospital and alert for overcrowding in Almada

O president of the House of Seixal today called for “the urgent need” to build a public hospital in the county, warning that the population increase of the territory is making Garcia de Orta, in Almada, “blow by the seams”.

“The Garcia de Orta Hospital was inaugurated in 1991, 35 years ago, to serve a population of 200,000 people from the municipalities of Almada, Seixal and Sesimbra. Currently, it serves the municipalities of Almada and Seixal, the two most populous municipalities of the Setúbal Peninsula, with a total of 400,000 inhabitants ", said Paulo Silva during a symbolic action to launch the first stone of the hospital of Seixal.

According to Pordata data, the population of the municipality increased 15% between 2021 and 2025, above the national average (7.8%), with the highest population increase compared to the five closest municipalities.

For the mayor, the fact that the Garcia de Orta hospital in Almada is already serving twice the population, “shows that the construction of the Seixal hospital is a permanent need for a better response in hospital care”.

The construction of the health unit is a claim with more than two decades that has already been the subject of a protocol between the State and the municipal council, in 2009, with an inauguration scheduled for 2012.

Today's initiative, carried out on the grounds to which the hospital of Seixal is designed, is part of a set of actions of denunciation and protest at national level developed today by the Portuguese Communist Party in defense of the National Health Service.

Paulo Silva added, in today's symbolic initiative, that this hospital would be to work in complementarity with the Garcia de Orta Hospital, belonging to the Local Health Unit Almada-Seixal (ULSAS), which no longer meets the needs of the population.

The mayor warned that while the public hospital in Seixal does not advance, the interest of private individuals in building hospital units in the municipality is growing, considering that it is a very populous territory.

“It is an attractive territory, it is the territory that is growing most at the population level on the Setúbal Peninsula and soon we will be the most populous. It is also a municipality with more companies, therefore in franco desenvolvimento and this is undoubtedly a pitéu for the private ", said, advancing that the Luz Saúde group is already with a project very early to settle in the municipality and that the Lusíadas group has also expressed interest.

According to Paulo Silva, political excuses are given not to advance the project of a public hospital giving space to the private.

“ When health is private, we will allow access to health and when some tell me that 53% of the Portuguese have health insurance and are able to have access to private hospitals, I say that what concerns me is the other 47%, those who have the least and most need and those who do not enter private hospitals, these need undoubtedly to have public hospitals that are reference to have access to health care, so that the constitutional principles and rights enshrined in the April Constitution, namely the right to health, are an effective reality in our country”, he said.

Since the beginning of the struggle for the hospital of Seixal, in 2001, numerous initiatives have been carried out, such as a human cordon around the Bay of Seixal, a campaign hospital under the action “In Campaign for Hospital in Seixal”, the “Another Christmas without Hospital in Seixal” or the campaign “1 Vote for Hospital in Seixal”.

In December 2015, after a petition with more than 8,000 signatures, a resolution was approved by the Assembly of the Republic for the urgent construction of this equipment and, in the State Budget for 2017, a budget of EUR 10 million was entered to relaunch the project and the competition, and it was even announced its start in July 2017.

However, only in June 2018, with the signature of a new addendum to the initial agreement, where the City Council of Seixal took over the costs of building accessibility (three million euros), a new tender was launched.

In 2019, the government announced a further postponement, assuming that during the first quarter of 2023, it would present the execution project for subsequent launch of the construction contest, but in 2024 the execution project still expected the revision to which the law required being now in the award phase of the revision of the execution project.