Professor Maria do Rosário Martins received the 2020 Human Rights Award for her work coordinating the first comparative study in Portugal on the consequences of Covid-19 in immigrant families and Portuguese nationals in the municipality of Amadora. This work was financed by FCT – Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, I.P., under the “Research 4 COVID-19” special programme.
The professor and leader of the Population health, policies and services (PPS) Research Group also highlighted that inequalities are even greater if we consider the social and economic effects of the pandemic crisis. The award-winning study, which monitored 420 native and immigrant families, mainly from the CPLP, living in Amadora since 2019, showed that immigrants were the most penalized in economic and social terms, and also demonstrated increased difficulties in accessing health care during the pandemic.
WHAT TYPE OF INTERVENTIONS WERE MADE IN THE SHORT-TERM?
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- Access Difficulties identified were reported to the ACES (Group of Healthcare Centers), which attempted to resolve the situation within the existing restrictions.
- Sensitive social cases were forwarded to AJPAS, which contacted the families directly and proposed solutions.
- Patients suffering from Covid-19 with a complex socioeconomic situation were signaled to the ACES public health unit for domicilary interventions with the families.