Today’s news confirms the denunciation made by the PCP of the government’s intention to privatise primary healthcare when it announced five public-private partnerships in healthcare.

This decision, in addition to other measures included in the so-called Plan of Emergency and Transformation of Healthcare, would mean the privatisation of primary healthcare for at least 2.5 million people, around a quarter of the country's population.

Taking advantage of the structure created by the previous PS government, which set up the Local Healthcare Units (ULS), the PSD/CDS government launched the process of privatising the management of not only five important hospitals in the National Health Service, but also the primary healthcare units that were annexed to them at the beginning of 2024.

Measures that would subordinate primary healthcare to the profit objectives of the economic groups that would hold its management, emphasising the devaluation of promotion of health and disease prevention policies, increasing a hospital-centred vision and decisively conditioning its autonomy.

These objectives can and must be defeated in the coming elections by guaranteeing to the public National Health Service units a democratic management, with autonomy and adequate human and financial resources, capable of responding with quality to the needs of the population, as the PCP defends.