The Comarca of Lisbon registered 23 criminal investigations against health professionals in 2021, a crime that the Public Ministry (MP) had warned in 2020 in order to increase.

The memorandum on the MP’s activity in the district of Lisbon, which includes the municipalities of Lisbon, Almada, Seixal, Barreiro, Moita and Montijo, states that 23 criminal investigations were initiated against health professionals and eight were filed last year.

The data only refer to the district of Lisbon, the only one to provide more recent data, but the Público 2020 report noted that there were 90 new inquiries for crimes against health professionals that year.

The MP warned of the “increasing trend that has been accentuating over the last few years”, stressing that 76 inquiries were opened in 2019 and 70 in 2018.

On Tuesday morning, a group of people attacked, two health professionals and a security guard in the emergency department of the Hospital de Vila Nova de Famalicão.

Data from the Ministry of Health’s Coordinator’s Office released in January by the indicated that in the first 10 months of 2020, 752 situations of violence against health professionals were reported, more than 4% compared to the same period in 2020 and 24% less compared to 2019 , a pre-pandemic.

The “great majority” of these reported situations are of psychological violence, which represent, in 2021, 63% of the complaints, in 2020, 66%, and in 2019, 57%”, said the superintendent of the Public Security Police Sérgio Barata.

Regarding physical violence, he said that it had an increasing evolution. “If in 2019 it represented 23% of the reported situations, in 2021 it represented 17%”.