Regional Government bolsters Regional Health Service with 76 new vehicles under RRP - Communication

Secretaria Regional da Saúde e Segurança Social

The Regional Secretary for Health and Social Security, Mónica Seidi, chaired this morning the delivery of three electric vehicles to the Divino Espírito Santo Hospital (HDES), funded under the Recovery and Resilience Plan (RRP), with a view to modernising and strengthening the operational capacity of the Regional Health Service.

These three vehicles are the first to be delivered out of a total of 76 intended for all Regional Health Service institutions.

On the occasion, Mónica Seidi highlighted that “this initiative brings healthcare closer to the population and represents a strategic investment across all the islands of the Azores, renewing the vehicle fleet and providing an even more effective response to users’ needs.”

The government official also stressed that this renewal represents the necessary replacement of vehicles that have been used for several decades, ensuring better operational conditions, safety and efficiency for professionals and users.

Under the RRP, the targets set out in the first application have all been met. As for the second application, with a broader scope, covering the procurement of 165 pieces of equipment for all healthcare facilities in the Region, more than half of this equipment has already been received and delivered.

Among the equipment already delivered to the HDES are a next-generation sequencer (NGS), costing €398,142, an EBUS system for video bronchoscopy, costing €156,250, and a sentinel lymph node detection system for breast cancer, costing €31,500.

According to the Regional Secretary for Health and Social Security, these investments represent “a very significant boost to the technological and clinical capacity” of regional healthcare facilities, leading to improvements in strategic areas such as laboratory diagnostics, hospital specialisation and lung cancer screening.

Mónica Seidi also took the opportunity to thank the technical teams, RRP managers, hospital administrations and healthcare professionals involved throughout the process for their work, highlighting “the very hard work of the teams” in ensuring these investments came to fruition.

The renewal of the vehicle fleet and the technological upgrading of healthcare facilities are part of a broader strategy to modernise the Regional Health Service, funded under the RRP, which covers all the islands and institutions of the Autonomous Region of the Azores.