Portugal Safety and Security Report Wednesday 26^th June 2024

 

Good morning. There are two items of news which are of concern one local and the other international. We start with the local news.

It was reported yesterday that in 2022, the Algarve lost a total of 15 million cubic metres of treated water from its supply networks, an amount that would be enough to meet half of the needs of Algarve families, according to data released today by DECO PROteste.“More than 15 million cubic meters of drinking water escaped from the distribution system in the Algarve in 2022, equivalent to 49% of the water billed to families that year,” it is stated in a statement.

According to an analysis carried out by the publication of the Portuguese Association for Consumer Protection (DECO), data from the 16 municipalities in the region indicate that, in that year, half recorded high losses and 15 fell below the minimum levels for the recovery of ageing networks.

This is a terrible waste of water which the Algarve can ill afford. To put this in context, the problem of aging pipes is commonplace in other countries as well and the figures in England and Wales and in Belgium for instance are also very high. What makes it a bigger an urgent problem in the Algarve is that there is a shortage of water due to drought and no short term solutions in place. The repair/replacement of aging water pipes should have been a priority project some years ago, as the problem has been known by local officials for some time. New projects such as desalination will be a waste of money if water is distributed through supply pipes that are already leaking!

The second issue is that the number and intensity of extreme wildfires, the most destructive and polluting, have more than doubled worldwide in the past 20 years due to global warming caused by human activity, a new study finds. Using satellite data, researchers studied nearly 3,000 wildfires with enormous “radiative power” — the amount of energy emitted by radiation — between 2003 and 2023 and found that their frequency increased by a factor of 2.2 during that period.

The temperate coniferous forests, especially in the western United States, and the boreal forests, which cover Alaska, northern Canada and Russia, are the most affected, with the frequency of these fires multiplied by 11 and 7, respectively. Considering only the 20 most violent fires of each year, their cumulative radiative power has also more than doubled, at a rate that “appears to be accelerating”, according to the study published on Monday in the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution, reported the Agence France-Presse (AFP).

This a worrying finding as climate change resulting in extreme weather conditions is accelerating leading to more frequent and intense wildfires. Not only does this result in loss of life and destruction of property, “but with these fires, vast regions are being covered by the smoke cloud, which has significant effects on health and causes many more premature deaths than the flames themselves”, highlighted the researcher.

Lastly a reminder of a number of scams around at present. In the last week these scams have used the name of the tax Authority, phone callers pretending to be from the receiver’s bank, the “Hello Mum- Hello Dad” scam and a fraudulent message using the logo of the GNR informing the reader that he/she has “several legal proceedings in force against that person”. These are all scams and the best response is not to click on any link, do not provide and information and delete the message.

Our team at Safe Communities wishes you a safe and pleasant week ahead.

News

Health – Users can now consult available emergency services on an interactive Map on SNS portal

Lisbon, 25 June 2024 (Lusa) – Users can consult, from today, the emergency services available in the next seven days through an interactive page on the National Health Service (SNS) portal, announced the SNS Executive Board.

In a statement, the executive board said that this tool automatically integrates the emergency schedules that appear in the Integrated Provider Information System for the next seven days and is available at https://www.sns.gov.pt/servicos-de-urgencia-sns/

“This means that the information provided is obtained from the platform where hospitals upload and permanently update their staffing schedules for emergencies, which is the same platform used to refer users via the SNS 24 Line (808 24 24 24),” explained the executive management.

According to the statement, users can search by type of emergency, by region, by local health unit and by health unit and “find out, quickly and intuitively, which hospitals are closest and which are accessible”.

The executive management said that this data will be updated hourly, providing users with the response from each hospital and the NHS in terms of their emergency services.

The Executive Board of the SNS also highlighted that the summer plan “is being fulfilled” in terms of obstetrics/gynaecology emergencies, which, in the Lisbon and Tagus Valley region, which has presented the most difficulties in terms of shifts in recent weeks, are operating as a network, in order to “always guarantee the assistance response”.

This plan for obstetrics/gynaecology emergencies was agreed between the Ministry of Health, clinical directors and the presidents of the boards of directors of the hospitals involved, it says.

Over the last two weeks, the Ministry of Health published a map of emergency services that are open, subject to restrictions and closed for the following days, with the greatest restrictions on the number of healthcare professionals working in Lisbon and the Tagus Valley in the areas of obstetrics and paediatrics.

 

António Costa given the green light to become President of the European Council

Negotiators from the European Socialists, EPP and Liberals have reached an agreement on the division of top positions: the former Portuguese Prime Minister should take over the presidency of the European Council, Ursula von der Leyen the European Commission and Kaja Kallas should be the next head of European diplomacy.

There is already an agreement between European political families on the names chosen to occupy the top positions in the European Commission, the European Council and the High Representative for Foreign Policy. They will be the German Ursula von der Leyen, the Portuguese António Costa and the Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, respectively. The information was released by the newspaper Politico and confirmed by SIC.

The six European leaders who negotiated the names in question were Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, representing the European People’s Party ; Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, for the Socialists ; as well as French President Emmanuel Macron and Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte , representing the Liberals.

 

SIC understands that the six had a video conference this Monday night and reached an understanding. The three names now have to be confirmed by European leaders, who meet in Brussels on Thursday.

Top positions are approved by qualified majority. In the case of Von der Leyen, she still has to be elected by a majority in the European Parliament.